The rise of the monolingual translation critic
One more chapter in the infantilisation of literary discourse
"...the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Translator..." — not Roland Barthes
I’ll reproduce an exchange as verbatim as my memory allows it.
Myself: What have you been reading lately?
Friend: Just finished Chunky Novel by Famous German Author, in a great translation by Famous Translator.
Myself: I didn’t know you read in German!
Friend: I don’t.
Myself: How do you know it’s a great translation then?
Friend: It reads very well in English!
Myself: So you don’t really know if it’s a good translation or not…
Friend: You are a pedant.
I might be a pedant, fair enough. Luckily the conversation quickly moved on to more interesting topics like football1 and we enjoyed the rest of our beers, unbothered by my pedantry. But I couldn’t help feeling that my friend’s comment was symptomatic of a very popular trend: the rise of monolingual translation critics.