lKd7nD

a difficult philosophical text is rendered more comprehensible.
Did the translator set out to clarify Almost certainly not. But the
very resourcefulness of translation, its inclination to seek the best
possible English equivalent, has resulted in a more transparent
text.
“The author
is allowed to
write intuitively,
sometimes
blindly—the
translator is not.”
In a way, the translator must
know the text better than the
author. The author is allowed
to write intuitively, sometimes
blindly—the translator is not.
The translator must translate
consciously, deliberately. I don’t
think this is wrong. It’s simply the
nature of translation. And it tells
us something about the difference
between writers and translators,
between original works and translations. The translated work isn’t
(and can’t be) the object itself; it is a reading, an act of seeing.
It was 2005 when I began the translation of The Savage
Detectives , a few years after Bolaño’s death, so I couldn’t ask
Bolaño what he meant by “simonel.” For a while, I was convinced
that it had to be yes, partly because it was the bolder choice, and
it seemed to mirror the leap Bolaño makes at the end of the novel.
After a lot of wandering, The Savage Detectives ends in a startling
and somehow life-affirming display of violence, and “yes” seemed
an equally explosive conclusion on a more abstract level. In fact,
in looking back at an early draft, I see that I initially translated
it as “absolutely”—“boys, is it worth it is it worth it is it really
worth it and the one who was asleep said Absolutely.” But I grew
uneasy with this solution. Bolaño’s poets are heroic figures, but
also tragicomic, deluded, and grandiose. This ambivalence—the
sense that to be a writer is both vital and absurd—is central to
Bolaño’s writing. And of course there was the earlier reference to
“simonel,” the only hard evidence I had.
I don’t regret the choice to stick with “simonel” (yet, at least).
But I do relish the glimpse of the novel that I got in the light of
“absolutely.” Translation may momentarily render the foreign
text thinner, but it also reminds us of the richness of fiction, of the
many possible readings it permits and encourages.
Natasha Wimmer has translated many authors from Spanish, including
Mario Vargas Llosa, Petros Juan Gutiérrez, and Roberto Bolaño. She received
an NEA Translation Fellowship in 2007 to translate Bolaño’s epic novel
2666, which won the PEN Translation Prize in 2009.
24
National Endowment for the Arts