한겨레의 기사들을 훑어보다가 '번역가의 괴로움'이란 칼럼을 읽게 되었다. 제목 자체가 최근에 문제된 '대리번역' 파문과 연관이 있을 거라는 건 칼럼을 읽어보지 않아도 알 수 있는 일이다. 특이할 만한 사항은 가브리엘 마르케스 전문 번역가로 유명하다는(아마도 마르케스의 노벨상 수상에도 일조했을 듯싶다) 그레고리 라바사를 소개하고 있는 대목이다.
<백년의 고독> 혹은 <백년 동안의 고독> 영역본의 그의 작품이라는데(국내에도 여러 번역본이 출간돼 있다), 마시멜로보다는 라바사에 흥미를 느껴서 몇 가지 검색을 해보았다. 한겨레의 칼럼과 함께 재작년 뉴욕타임즈 기사를 옮겨놓는다.
한겨레(06. 10. 24) 번역가의 괴로움
<마시멜로 이야기>라는 책의 대리번역 또는 이중번역 논란으로 모처럼 번역가들한테 관심이 쏠리고 있다. 이 덕분에 번역가들의 어려운 처지도 약간 드러났으나, 아무래도 나쁜 인상이 더 클 것 같다. 굳이 이번 일이 아니더라도 번역가들이 주목받는 건 흔히 부정적인 사건이나 경험을 통해서다. 독자들은 번역이 너무 엉망이라고 느낄 때나 ‘도대체 누가 번역했어’ 하며 이름을 확인하는 게 보통이다. 번역의 어려움을 알 만한 학자나 전문가들 사이에도 원전을 강조하고 번역서와 번역가를 낮춰보는 경향이 꽤 있다.
하지만 훌륭한 번역가가 문화에 이바지하는 바는 셈할 수 없을 만큼 크다. 이 점은 미국의 유명 번역가 그레고리 라바사만 봐도 쉽게 알 수 있다. 1922년 쿠바인 아버지와 미국인 어머니 사이에서 태어난 그는, 60년대 초부터 스페인어와 포르투갈어를 쓰는 작가 약 30명의 작품 60권 정도를 영어로 번역했다. 그가 아니었다면 남미 문학이 이렇게 세계에 널리 알려지지 않았을지도 모른다. 그가 70년에 번역한 가브리엘 가르시아 마르케스의 소설 <백년의 고독>은 또하나의 훌륭한 창작품이라는 말까지 들었다. 이 말엔 긍정과 부정의 의미가 함께 담겨 있다.
라바사에게도 번역은 쉽지 않은 작업인 듯하다. 책 전체를 미리 읽지 않고 읽어가면서 번역하기로 유명한 그는 지난해 쓴 회고록 <이것이 반역이라면>에서 번역을 모순적으로 규정한다. 어떤 대목에서는 그저 ‘단어들을 따라가기’로 묘사하다가, 다른 대목에서는 ‘개인적인 선택에 근거한’ 아주 주관적인 작업으로 표현한 것이다. 그만큼 번역은 미묘하고 까다로운 일이다. 독자들이 이런 어려움까지 알 필요는 없겠지만, 책을 잡을 때 ‘이름 없는 봉사자’인 그들을 한번 생각해주는 정도의 관심은 필요할 것이다.(신기섭 논설위원)
A Translator's Long Journey, Page by Page
By ANDREW BAST
n Gregory Rabassa's crowded bookshelves is a first edition of "Rayuela," the experimental 1963 novel by the Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar. Mr. Rabassa had just finished his Ph.D. in Portuguese in the mid-1960's when an editor at Pantheon — who had noticed his work editing a failed literary magazine at Columbia University — asked him to translate Mr. Cortázar's book from Spanish into English. Without having read what has been called a "fiendishly esoteric" novel, Mr. Rabassa sat down and typed a draft in English, word by word. In 1967 Mr. Rabassa's work, titled "Hopscotch" in English, won the first National Book Award for translation.
"I've got 50 of them behind me," Mr. Rabassa said, reflecting in the Upper East Side apartment he shares with his wife, Clementine. He has a slight build and white hair that he wears like a crown. He is surrounded by novels written by literary giants like Jorge Amado, Mario Vargas Llosa, José Lezama Lima and Gabriel García Márquez, the original Spanish or Portuguese edition beside his published English translation.
Now, at 82, Mr. Rabassa is finally going to publish his own first full-length book, "If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents," a playful reflection on his life's work that New Directions is planning to bring out next spring.
"My thesis in the book is that translation is impossible," Mr. Rabassa said. "People expect reproduction, but you can't turn a baby chick into a duckling. The best you can do is get close to it."
If that is true, then Mr. Rabassa has gotten about as close as one can. He is widely considered one of the greatest practitioners of his craft. "Rabassa's great gift is to find the music in English that is true to the language of a wide range of writers in Spanish," said Dan Simon, the founder of Seven Stories Press, which has published some of Mr. Rabassa's translations. "Had Rabassa become a diplomat or brain surgeon, we could easily imagine not having readable translations of Cortázar and García Márquez."
Yet for all the accolades, translation is still a difficult and poorly understood art. Often the translator's name will not even appear on the cover of the book, Mr. Simon said, yet "a poor translation of a text kills it in the market."
Walter Benjamin, the German literary critic, once wrote, "No translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness to the original."
Mr. García Márquez has said that Mr. Rabassa read "One Hundred Years of Solitude," sat down and then rewrote it in English. (He also said that Mr. Rabassa's translation improved on the original.)
But Mr. Rabassa contends that rewriting is not at all what he does: "I'm reading the Spanish, but mostly I'm reading it in English, and it comes out that way.
"When I talk about it, I say the English is hiding behind his Spanish. That's what a good translation is: you have to think if García Márquez had been born speaking English, that's how a translation should sound."
In the case of Cortázar, Mr. Rabassa developed a relationship with him, and they became good friends, spending days and nights listening to 78's of Count Basie and Lester Young. Mr. Rabassa translated Luis Rafael Sánchez and lounged with him on the beaches of Puerto Rico. And after translating "Seven Serpents and Seven Moons" by Demetrio Aguilera-Malta, a former Ecuadorian ambassador to Mexico, he ended up with one of the author's paintings hanging on his apartment wall.
Yet Mr. Rabassa has also produced brilliant translations without developing any relationship with the author. Jorge Armado and Mr. García Márquez wanted nothing to do with their books in English.
Mr. Rabassa said he typed his translation of Mr. García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" page by page, just as he did with Cortázar's novel. Yet unlike his blind excursion with "Hopscotch," Mr. Rabassa had already read Mr. García Márquez's magical epic about the Buendía family, before he tried the translation. "I knew it was a damn good book, but it wasn't as much fun knowing all about it," he said.
Sitting in his armchair, nibbling on a greek pastry, Mr. Rabassa explained that titles pose their own challenge. He translated the 19th-century Portuguese classic "Memórias póstumas de Bráz Cubas" by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, which literally means "The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas." When Noonday Press issued the novel with the title "Epitaph of a Small Winner," Mr. Rabassa complained.
"You don't mess around with a classic," he said. "That's like calling `Madame Bovary' the story of a middle-class adulteress." (Oxford University Press published the book with Mr. Rabassa's translated title in 1997.)
Half of Mr. Rabassa's book will consist of reflections on each of the many authors he has translated, and half will be a memoir of how he ended up as a translator. The epilogue, he said, will be printed unfinished, as "translation is never finished."
Mr. Rabassa was born in Yonkers in 1922. His father was a Cuban sugar broker, but, he said, "the old man didn't speak much Spanish around the house." The young Mr. Rabassa studied French and Latin in high school; then at Dartmouth, he said, he "began collecting languages." There he studied Portuguese, Russian and German. In conversation, his voice wanders seamlessly among the five he still speaks.
"I'd dabbled in Italian," Mr. Rabassa said. "But then I bought a beautiful edition of Dante. I used Spanish and Portuguese — they're so similar to Italian — as I went along, substituting the real Italian words, and finally I was talking Italian."
In 1942 Mr. Rabassa volunteered for the Army and, because of his language skills, ended up in the Office of Strategic Services. Mr. Rabassa translated encryptions, or what he called English into English, and he also conducted interrogations.
When he returned to the United States after spending time in Italy and Northern Africa, Mr. Rabassa lived on Morton Street, watched Charlie Parker play in Greenwich Village and wrote poetry. He studied for his master's in Spanish at Columbia, then, tired of the language, kept on with his studies but finished his doctorate in Portuguese. At a cocktail party Mr. Rabassa met an administrator at Queens College and he ended up being hired as a professor there. He still teaches the freshman lecture course Hispanic Literature in Translation.
"When I began teaching," he said, "I was the same age as my students, and I still labor in the delusion. So it's a good, youthful operation."
Mr. Rabassa says that although he is translating a new generation of Hispanic writers, little has changed since he translated the giants. Despite the differences in writing styles, the way he approaches the text is essentially the same.
"They're all so different, the ones I did," he said. "I think it works because I don't think I have a translation style. It's a positive feeling I have about them. I find a lot of instinct in what I do. You have to just hit it right. I'm never sure whether something is right, but I know damn well when something is wrong."
06. 10. 14.