I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.
ADAM MORRISAn easy example would be the Portuguese escuridão:
More Adam Morris Quotes
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Once I looked into it, I was taken aback to learn that pretty much nothing by Joao Gilberto Noll was available in English translation.
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Noll is highly respected in Brazil, and at the same time divisive, somewhat like Hilda Hilst. Neither of them enjoys the universal acclaim you might associate with Clarice Lispector, whom everyone adores, myself included.
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Unless you count the political backdrop, which in any case is a familiar one to many international readers
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Some critics have commented that understanding the specific Brazilian political context of the novel is helpful for reading Quiet Creature. This may be true, but it’s not prerequisite for understanding it.
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When I think about literature, I think about it in the three languages I read easily – English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
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With My Dog-Eyes by Hilda Hilst got more exposure and reached far more readers than I ever expected.
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Borges, in part to legitimize his own Europhilia, correctly pointed out that expecting writers to engage with these romantic nationalist tropes was arbitrary and limiting, a genre that was demonstrative of its own artificiality.
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I primarily write nonfiction. Research, reflection, and spending time with ideas are important to me. So, this is how I spend most of my time writing – in thought.
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And these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country.
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If João Gilberto Noll were writing in French or German or even Russian, it’s likely he’d be more broadly translated.
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English can be tricky because there are so many false cognates, but sometimes, as long the idea conveyed is not wrong, these false cognates can themselves offer synonyms or lead to a better alternative word or phrase in translation.
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The authors I prefer are all very different and are not limited to certain genres or even certain time periods.
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I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.
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I only translate authors whose work already interests me as a reader, and that’s a decision I make based on multiple encounters with an author’s work.
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One of my methods for developing my own voice in fiction, a process I am taking very slowly and deliberately, is through these very intense encounters with certain writers.
ADAM MORRIS