The Overstory by Dutch translation of Generosity.
Romanian translation of The Echo Maker.
Chinese translation of The Echo Maker.
One of the most translated writers of all times: William Shakespeare.
Recent translation of his plays (comedies) into Polish by Stanisław Barańczak.
Title page.
Hamlet's Soliloquy.
Act I.
For more about Boris Pasternak's translations of Shakespeare see Anna Kay France's Boris Pasternaks's Translations of Shakespeare.
Title page.
For more about the history of Shakespeare's translation and reception in Catalonia, see Helena Buffery. Shakespeare in Catalan: Translating Imperialism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007).
Shakespeare in Catalan by
One of the most celebrated translations of the last century is the translation of Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) by Gregory Rabassa as it "opened the door" to magical realism in English. The UIUC library has many editions of this work including Rabassa's landmark 1970 translation of the novel.
Here is another edition of this translation.
One Hundred Years of Solitude.. by Title page.
Book spine.
Les mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français ("The Thousand and One Nights, Arab stories translated into French"), published in 12 volumes between 1704 and 1717, was the first European version of The Thousand and One Nights tales. Antoine Galland’s translation of the Arabic Kitāb Alf Layla wa Layla had a massive impact on European literature.
Contributed by Professor Waïl S Hassan. Program in Comparative and World Literature and the Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Director, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
James Macpherson, Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland (1760), translated (loosely speaking) from oral traditions and some manuscripts in Gaelic into modern English. These were the beginning of the huge fashion and cult for Ossianic poetry that raged across Europe for over 100 years. In many ways the beginning of Romanticism, and of a rash of forgeries. Contributed by Professor David Cooper. The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies.
Cover.
William George Aston’s A History of Japanese Literature (1899) is a translation that moved the world. Aston was one of three major British translators that introduced the English-speaking world to Japanese literature in the late nineteenth century. Aston’s volume translated a wide-ranging survey of Japanese literature including forms like the haiku. This translation had global impact. José Juan Tablada, a Mexican author, read Aston’s translation, and it inspired him to try out the haiku form for himself. Tablada saw many similarities among Mexican and Japanese culture, and he felt that the haiku was a “modern” form that could speak to the Mexican experience. In 1919, he published Un día… poemas sintéticos (One Day… Synthetic Poems), the first book of haikus written in Spanish, bringing the form to a whole new set of readers. Tablada couldn’t read Japanese himself, so his understanding of the haiku would have been impossible without Aston’s translation.
Title page.
Another edition of A History of Japanese Literature. Cover.
The translations of exiled Belarusian playwright Andrei Kureichik's documentary play, «ОБИЖЕННЫЕ. БЕЛАРУСь(СИЯ)»
Multatuli is the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–1887), a former civil servant working for the Dutch government in the Netherlands Indies who in 1860 published this very critical book of colonial policies. It was translated into English and many other languages several times, and until the 1940s often read alongside "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for its critique of colonial abuse. The latest version has a foreword by Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer who addresses the book's global impact. Contributed by Professor Carl Niekerk, UIUC Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.
The poem “Ιθάκη” (1911) by the Greek modernist Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933). Attached is the poem in the original Greek, with its English translation “Ithaka” by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. I choose this poem to share as one that is well-known to me since my childhood, with a reminder that it is always the journey, and not the destination, that is important in life. The poem was inspired by Cavafy’s interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. In the document is also my information. I have also included an image. the poem “Ιθάκη” (1911) by the Greek modernist Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933). Attached is the poem in the original Greek, with its English translation “Ithaka” by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. I choose this poem to share as one that is well-known to me since my childhood, with a reminder that it is always the journey, and not the destination, that is important in life. The poem was inspired by Cavafy’s interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. Contributed by Anna Torres-Cacoullos, Postdoctroral Research Associate, UIUC Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
Ithaka
By C.P. Cavafy (from: Collected Poems, Princeton University Press, 1975)
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.
Ιθάκη (1911)
Σὰ βγεῖς στὸν πηγαιμὸ γιὰ τὴν Ἰθάκη,
νὰ εὔχεσαι νά ῾ναι μακρὺς ὁ δρόμος,
γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις.
Τοὺς Λαιστρυγόνας καὶ τοὺς Κύκλωπας,
τὸν θυμωμένο Ποσειδῶνα μὴ φοβᾶσαι,
τέτοια στὸν δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δὲν θὰ βρεῖς,
ἂν μέν᾿ ἡ σκέψις σου ὑψηλή, ἂν ἐκλεκτὴ
συγκίνησις τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ σῶμα σου ἀγγίζει.
Τοὺς Λαιστρυγόνας καὶ τοὺς Κύκλωπας,
τὸν ἄγριο Ποσειδῶνα δὲν θὰ συναντήσεις,
ἂν δὲν τοὺς κουβανεῖς μὲς στὴν ψυχή σου,
ἂν ἡ ψυχή σου δὲν τοὺς στήνει ἐμπρός σου.
Νὰ εὔχεσαι νά ῾ναι μακρὺς ὁ δρόμος.
Πολλὰ τὰ καλοκαιρινὰ πρωινὰ νὰ εἶναι
ποῦ μὲ τί εὐχαρίστηση, μὲ τί χαρὰ
θὰ μπαίνεις σὲ λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους.
Νὰ σταματήσεις σ᾿ ἐμπορεῖα Φοινικικά,
καὶ τὲς καλὲς πραγμάτειες ν᾿ ἀποκτήσεις,
σεντέφια καὶ κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ᾿ ἔβενους,
καὶ ἡδονικὰ μυρωδικὰ κάθε λογῆς,
ὅσο μπορεῖς πιὸ ἄφθονα ἡδονικὰ μυρωδικά.
Σὲ πόλεις Αἰγυπτιακὲς πολλὲς νὰ πᾷς,
νὰ μάθεις καὶ νὰ μάθεις ἀπ᾿ τοὺς σπουδασμένους.
Πάντα στὸ νοῦ σου νά ῾χεις τὴν Ἰθάκη.
Τὸ φθάσιμον ἐκεῖ εἶν᾿ ὁ προορισμός σου.
Ἀλλὰ μὴ βιάζεις τὸ ταξίδι διόλου.
Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλὰ νὰ διαρκέσει.
Καὶ γέρος πιὰ ν᾿ ἀράξεις στὸ νησί,
πλούσιος μὲ ὅσα κέρδισες στὸν δρόμο,
μὴ προσδοκώντας πλούτη νὰ σὲ δώσει ἡ Ἰθάκη.
Ἡ Ἰθάκη σ᾿ ἔδωσε τ᾿ ὡραῖο ταξίδι.
Χωρὶς αὐτὴν δὲν θά ῾βγαινες στὸν δρόμο.
Ἄλλα δὲν ἔχει νὰ σὲ δώσει πιά.
Κι ἂν πτωχικὴ τὴν βρεῖς, ἡ Ἰθάκη δὲν σὲ γέλασε.
Ἔτσι σοφὸς ποὺ ἔγινες, μὲ τόση πεῖρα,
ἤδη θὰ τὸ κατάλαβες οἱ Ἰθάκες τὶ σημαίνουν.
The Portuguese-language edition of Reader's Digest. It was the second language to have a language edition (the Spanish version was brought out a few months before). Eduardo Cárdenas was in charge of both editions, but the person really in charge of the Portuguese-language edition was a then-young Afrânio Coutinho, who would become a Professor of Brazilian Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
The Portuguese-language edition of the Reader's Digest was published as a strong tool of the Good Neighbor Policy of the Roosevelt Administration. At the time (two months after Pearl Harbor), Brazil was a neutral country but pending to the side of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). It had, historically, a huge number of immigrants from the three Axis Powers, and a very pro-German military, many of whom having been trained in Germany. Due to its huge size and strategic geographical position, it became a major source of concern to the United States. It was considered very important to have Brazil on the American (Allies) side and a massive campaign was started to spread American values and products in Brazil. The Brazilian edition (different from the American edition then) had paid publicity by major American corporations to help pay for its costs, which could not be paid with the cover-price of the magazine. Still, a major part of the publishing costs was covered by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, under Nelson Rockefeller. Besides the Portuguese-language edition of the Reader's Digest, it promoted radio programs, English-language teaching institutions (Brazil-United States Binational Centers), and visits of singers, movie actors, and other artistic personalities. Some of these activities were carried on after World War II in the context of the Cold War, then sponsored by USIS (the United States Information Services). Contributed by Reynaldo Pagura, PhD, The Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies.
This is the cover, masthead, and back cover of Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Portuguese-language of Reader's Digest
The Vegetarian by
Marcel Proust. À la recherche du temps perdu. Sodome et Gomorrhe. (Paris : Ed. de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 1921-22)
Translated into English by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff as Cities of the Plain (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1927)
In Search of Lost Time (original French: À la recherche du temps perdu, previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past, is a multi-volume novel by French author Marcel Proust (1871-1922), published in France between 1913 and 1927. An English translation by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff began appearing in 1922, from London publishing house Chatto & Windus. Proust’s novel broaches many themes, such as memory, art, love and jealously, and homosexuality, especially in the later volumes. Notably, the fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah (Fr.: Sodome et Gomorrhe) opens with a description of an encounter between the Baron de Charlus and Jupien, his tailor, witnessed by the narrator, and reflections on the nature of ‘inverts.’ Because of England’s obscenity laws, Chatto & Windus declined to publish Scott-Moncrieff’s translation, even under the euphemistic title Cities of the Plain. Albert and Charles Boni, two young New York booksellers and publishers who published several controversial authors, such as Colette, D. H. Lawrence, Upton Sinclair and Leon Trotsky, agreed to print a limited edition of 2,000 issued in the U.S. in 1927.
The two-volume set finally appeared in England in the spring of 1929, after another American publisher, Alfred Knopf, acquired the rights for the rest of the series from Chatto & Windus. A review in the Times Literary Supplement by Orlo Williams (21 March 1929) stated: “There is no object in disguising the fact that a large part of that section is concerned with the observation of homo-sexuality in men and women, but Proust must be taken whole or not at all.” Contributed by Professor Caroline Szylowicz, Kolb-Proust Librarian, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, UIUC Library.
Title page.
