Do not be lost in translation

 

Ηow does literature converse with the world it inhabits? Could it be used to imagine what could be radically different realities?

Literature sheds light on realities that already exist within us. We carry inside us the science fiction, thriller or romance, which we will read tomorrow in some sort of written form. And if our writing sometimes becomes surreal, it is because surrealism is the new realism – as long as you stand still amid the daily flow of the city and observe what is happening, how you co-exist with the other. Our realities constitute the fuel of literature. And at the same time, our reality is also enriched by and through literature.

Most scholars reckon that the content of a book cannot be separated from the particularities of the language that gave it shape. In this respect, where does the role and responsibility of the translator lie? Can translation ever be unethical?

Translators have a great responsibility since they are the ones who give voice, in their language, to the foreign creator. I agree with those who argue that moving from one language – and thought and culture – to another is a kind of ‘betrayal’; how to transfer the original meaning intact to a new linguistic environment, how to transmute into your own reality that foreign element that words carry within them. The act of writing itself is also a form of betrayal; the passage from that primary vision (if not a vision, then a shiver or suspicion of feeling) from the infinite possibilities that exist to the finite marks on paper.

Vassilis Kimoulis, interview by Athina Rossoglou