Translation II

[jbor]

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's long introduction to Derrida's *Of 
Grammatology* (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1976) deals with many of
the issues raised. In fact, her intro contains a clearer explanation of some
of Derrida's ideas than Derrida's text itself imo, and is highly
recommended. I think the convention nowadays is to cite the neologism in
French ("différance") and then describe the pun in English (or whatever
language I guess). No problem, really. Similarly, I don't see why proper
nouns and titles like Tupperware Party or Purple Haze or Kenosha Kid need to
be translated into another language at all. We've been getting along just
fine with plazas and sauerkraut and Santa Claus for years. It's a matter of
understanding the concepts: the words themselves are unimportant. Poetry, of
course, is another matter entirely.

best

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>From: JP <jpolak at it.pl>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Translation II
>Date: Mon, May 29, 2000, 1:30 AM
>

> I know a guy who devoted 60 pages of Introduction to justify his translation
> of Derrida's "differance" (visa a vis regular French "difference") into
> Polish. That's what I call a translator's ethos.