The prose of both Frazen and Grossman are very much a part of the time and the culture that produced them. The difference, I think, is that Franzen's connection to his time and place is inherent to his work and part of what gives it value. Assuming anyone wants to read the Corrections in 100 years, part of what they will will value about the novel is the access it provides to a moment long past.



Any translation necessarily adds a second cultural context. While some translations may surpass or equal the original, in most cases the cultural context that a translations grafts onto a work will always be extrinsic to the original work.

So I guess what I was getting at with the post is, why do we necessarily value the prose's cultural attachments in untranslated work but not in translated work? Just because it's intrinsic to the work? Somehow that seems inadequate to me - and doesn't address the fact that some translations have become, as the section I quoted says, works in their own right.

Instead of asking why we value the prose of an original work, maybe it would be more productive to ask why we don't value the prose of a translation as much. We see the translation of as a supplemental layer (of prose, of cultural assumptions, etc.) that only partially reveals the original. As this layer of translated prose begins to feel and sound dated, it is quite easy to assume that our failure to fully experience the original work must result from the archaic translation. In the end, it may just be an excuse for a larger failure of translation.

It's an interesting question, and I'm not sure how to explain translation that become works in their own right.

Your discussion, I think, assumes an ideal translation model, and I'm not sure if that construct isn't slyly misleading, just because, for complex literature anyway, perfect translation is strictly impossible - even an absurd concept. A translation is, to a greater or lesser degree, always a new work, a new piece unto itself. It's easy to imagine a translation being either 'unfaithful' but great (King James Bible?), or faithful but bad (run-of-the-mill boring translation of, say, Homer).

Every single piece of writing carries 'cultrual assumtions etc.' so why not just enjoy, when possible? Translation has to be both art and science. New translations are needed from time to time because both cultural assumtions (and taboos) AND the language change. You could say that all translations 'fail', or you might say that great translations are huge successes qua translations for a while; and they can be successes in their own right (King J Bible again). It's always potentially 'all of the above'.

Pierre Boulez made a central point about the difference between music from the 'Classical' period and music from his 12-tone/serialist school: you can play a Mozart piano sonata on bagpipes and, although it might sound ridiculous, you don't lose any 'essential information' - if you play it correctly, the piece 'translates' intact; but if you change timbres in a piece by Boulez or Webern, you do lose something essential - the timbres are an organic part of the piece. Rock and roll (whatever that is) tends to be the same: imagine a 'nu metal' song with autoharps instead of distorted guitars, or with the relentless double kick drum notes played on tiny woodblocks. The meaning (such as it is) has substantially changed. I think literary translation is more like modern music. Except for very prosaic material, I don't see how strict 'literal' translation of books is possible. If you're changing idioms, you will have to reinterpret to some extent - maybe to a great extent.