In a review of Juan Manuel Salmerón Arjona’s apparently shambolic misrepresentation of Paolo Giordano‘s bestseller, RMF at Fum i estalzí muses on the solitude of translators.
Salmerón may well regard himself as unfortunate. Translators of literary canaries in the dark coal mines of our paranoia and such are generally left unnamed in order to avoid diluting the authorial brand. And it is reasonably common for translators to desert both the letter and the spirit of the original, whether because this is what their masters require (this was sometimes the case in early Bible translations), or because they are out of their depth or out of budget (Spanish rates are even more miserable than most).
However I wonder whether the resources consumed by an academic translation analysis industry addicted to French semiotic theology and silly haircuts might not have been better devoted to simple quality audits of the literary translation leviathan which has arisen from the extraordinary increase in human wealth and global mobility.
Similar posts
Back soon
Here’s an example of how much Spanish translation work pays:
What’s wrong with 300 a month for an experienced translator? As long as you sleep in the streets and don’t eat very much you could just about live off that!