The Canadian translator Paul Wilson had some interesting things to say about the art of translation when discussing his work with the Czech writer Václav Havel in Columbia magazine.
Wilson admitted to taking liberties in translating Havel’s writings from Czech into English, liberties he sees as central to the art of translation.
Once, when we were talking in his office in the Prague Castle, he remarked that my translations made him sound “more elegant.” I’m not sure if it was a compliment or a criticism, but I will confess to making him sound more self-assured. Throughout his life, Havel has had the intellectual’s habit of qualifying his statements. His work in Czech is full of “I-could-be-wrong-buts.” When used too often, they can tax a reader’s patience. Taking my cue from “The Power of the Powerless,” where he almost never uses such phrases, I eliminated them from his writing. Have I betrayed him? I don’t think so, because under his shyness Havel has always been confident in his ideas, if not always in himself. I was just helping to bring out his true nature — which is, in any case, what a translator is supposed to do.
It is fascinating that Wilson worries about betrayal—that a translation must capture the spirit of the author, and not mechnically, or literally, move from original language to new (and translated) language.
Something is clearly lost in translation, but something is gained.
Perhaps the only true judge of Wilson’s transformative labors is Václav Havel himself. Is the English language version Wilson has crafted the true Havel…or the Havel Wilson wants?
Writing; Translation; Václav Havel; Paul Wilson
Copyright © 2006 J. Flanders
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