Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 *Based on an essay titled “Wem gehört ein übersetzter Text?” (Merkur 72, no. 827 (2018): 42–52.) and a talk of the same title given at the international literature festival berlin on September 9, 2018.
1. Emmanuel Carrère, D’autres vies que la mienne. Paris: P.O.L. 2009.
2. Emmanuel Carreere, Alles ist wahr. Translated from the French by Claudia Hamm. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz 2014.
3. Emmanuel Carrère, Lives Other Than My Own, translated by Linda Coverdale, New York: Metropolitan Books 2012.
4. Why not? Because my prose text, it seems to me, holds different internal requirements than, say, a Hölderlin poem. Carrère’s prose feeds from a sweeping undertow of narration, the reader dives into a movie, which in my opinion would not be aided by a syntax that is resistant. Do we perhaps extract theories of translation from the internal logic of the type of text or the texts we intend to apply them to?
5. I am assuming here a dialogically written theater text with acting characters. Forms of post-dramatic theater challenge the actor in different ways; still, they hardly have to become the narrator of a prose text. After all, the point of theater is to narrate using bodies in spaces.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Claudia Hamm
Claudia Hamm is a theater director, author, and translator based in Berlin. She also lectures and teaches translation workshops and performs on stage. Her translations include works by French authors Emmanuel Carrère, Édouard Levé, Mathias Énard, Nathalie Quintane, and Joseph Andras. Most recently, she co-founded and curated the translation festival translationale berlin, which was first held in October 2021.
Jonathan Becker
Jonathan Becker is a translator who lives in Dallas. He has previously worked on Translation Review and at the Center for Translation Studies at UT Dallas, where he also received his master’s degree in 2017.