EVERYTHING ALIVE CONTENDS

On translation and perfection by way of Srikanth Reddy’s Underworld Lit (Wave Books, 2020) and David Hinton’s The Selected Poems of Tu Fu (New Directions, 2020)

JEFF ALESSANDRELLI

In books and magazines, newspapers and pamphlets, hundreds of thousands of words have been written on what makes a good translation. (APR has, of course, played a role in the continual discourse; the ending essay to the November/December 2020 issue, as of this writing the latest, is entitled “The Archi-texture of the City as a Network of Translation.”) So many things to consider for the translator: voice, music, style, form, verve, flexibility, literalism, contextual priming, transformation and on and on. In “Some Notes on Translation and on Madame Bovary” Lydia Davis writes that while in the midst of translating Madame Bovary she thought there were “fourteen previous translations of Madame Bovary. Then I discovered more and thought there were eighteen. Then another was published a few months before I finished…

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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, May/June 2023

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