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Quote by Andre Naffis-Sahely

“Translators who choose to work on canonized writers can usually lean on an extensive critical apparatus around either the author or the book in question, especially in the case of writers like [Honore] Balzac and [Emil] Zola.”

Quote by Andre Naffis-Sahely

Author

Andre Naffis-Sahely

Andre Naffis-Sahely is a British poet born in 1985. His works blend various cultural elements and explore themes such as identity, memory, and travel. more

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“Dealing with politically-engaged writers of color like Abdellatif Laâbi and Rashid Boudjedra - who ran away from school aged sixteen to fight against the French in the Algerian war - first requires convincing an editor to take a chance on them, which very few like to do these days.”

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“I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views.”

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“Generally risk-averse, specialist translation imprints have also hollowed out a fairly comfortable niche for themselves: they get ninety percent of the profits for ten percent of the work, often largely funding their operations - and their salaries - through grants that they don't even apply for. If it wasn't for publicly-funded arts bodies and organizations such as PEN, I wouldn't have been able to work on either [Abdellatif] Laâbi or [ Rashid ] Boudjedra.”

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“Everyone wants to be open and inclusive, but nobody wants to pay for it. It's the biggest roadblock to translating living writers, especially poets.”

Want Pay Poet Translate Roadblock

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“I'm of the opinion that poetry is always political, and cannot help but be so, regardless of the poet's intent, given that refusing to deal in politics is in itself a political act.”

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“When it comes to the challenges of the actual process, I soldier on as best I can, on my own.”

I Can Process Challenges My Own Soldier

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“I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me.”

Sometimes Heard Translators Collaborating

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“Some of my colleagues are surprised by how little personal interaction I've had with "my" authors, but I don't translate to go fishing for friends. Part of me suspects that they wouldn't like me, or that I wouldn't like them, which would inevitably get in the way of the mission. None of the theory built around translation matters to me anyway: much of the process, I find, is intuitive.”

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“Regardless of whether the authors I've translated have been "dead and canonized," or "living and established," or even simply "emerging," I must put myself to the same, old test: "can I do their texts justice?" I've translated twenty-one books, and except for three commissions, I "hand-picked" all my authors on the basis of whether my own peculiar idiosyncrasies would complement their own.”

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“Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it.”

Has Beens Political Terrible Lifetime Shy

Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely