In translation, the stakes are high and the compensation indubitably low. That the task, rewarding as it is under various scalpels, goes so unnoticed by lay-readers, explains my experience that translators are a pretty tight-knit group, braided with squabbles ranging from petty to the ideological. I won’t mention the competition involved in the trade. I often wonder if Maurice Blanchot’s avowed distaste for Lydia Davis’ English translations of his fictional recits had much of an impact on her confidence. I would have melted. Maybe it’s best to compare them to the Free Masons, the kind of group that, by keeping a low profile, has the cursed privilege of being accused of global conspiracy. The difference, of course, between a tenuously conspiratorial secret order and a group of linguistics-specializing literary aesthetes is that I’ve rarely met a translator satisfied with this subdued position, or who has ever reaped all the esoteric rewards.
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