• ‘Found in Translation’: Review of Richard Wagner, _The Ring of the Nibelung_, trans. John Deathridge (Penguin, 2018)

    Author(s):
    Jeremy Coleman (see profile)
    Date:
    2019
    Group(s):
    Translation Studies
    Subject(s):
    Translating and interpreting, Opera, Mythology, Poetry
    Item Type:
    Review
    Tag(s):
    Richard Wagner, Translation
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/23p2-n359
    Abstract:
    The task of the literary translator is usually framed around the notion of ‘fidelity’ to the source text. Whatever the translator is trying to be faithful to (which is another question), any betrayal of the original, according to this logic, is deemed a failure. Or, as the Italian motto has it, traduttore traditore. The translator Mark Polizzotti has recently challenged this view in his radical ‘manifesto’ _Sympathy for the Traitor_. ‘A good translation’, he contends, ‘offers not a reproduction of the work but an interpretation, a re-representation, just as the performance of a play or a sonata is a representation of the script or the score, one among many possible representations’. Polizzotti’s proposals may partly explain the approach taken by John Deathridge in his superb new English translation of Wagner’s Ring poem.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Book review     Show details
    Publisher:
    The Wagner Journal
    Pub. Date:
    March 2019
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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