The University of Iowa • International Writing Program – 91° Meridian

Weinberger, page 4

By the early 1970's, of course, this cultural moment was over, and the poets, for
different reasons, became detached from the intellectual and cultural life of the
country, as they vanished into the creative writing schools. There are now more
American poets and poetry readers than in all the previous eras combined, but
almost none of them translate. The few who do, with two or three notable exceptions,
are all veterans of the 1960's translation boom. The end of a general
anti-Americanism among American writers and readers may have led to a happy
populace of literati, yet it is one that is singularly nationalist (but without, until now,
overt flag-waving), isolationist (but without overt xenophobia), and uninformed.
Unbelievably, or all too believably, the total number of literary translations- fiction,
poetry, plays, literary essays, and so on- from all languages, published by all the
presses in the United States- large, small, and university- comes to about 200 a
year. The number of poetry translations- including the Greek and Roman classics
and inevitable new Neruda and Rilke volumes- is usually around 25 or less. The
entirety of world literature in English translation may be the only field where it is still
possible to keep up with all the new publications in the field.

Paradoxically, the rise of multiculturalism may have been the worst thing to happen
to translation. The original multiculturalist critique of the Eurocentrism of the canon
and so forth did not lead- as I, for one, hoped it would- to a new internationalism,
where Wordsworth would be read alongside Wang Wei, the Greek anthology next to
Vidyakara's Treasury, Ono no Komachi with H.D. Instead it led to a new form of
nationalism, one that was salutary in its inclusion of the previously excluded, but one
that limited itself strictly to Americans, albeit hyphenated ones. Today nearly every
freshman literature course teaches Chinese-American writers, but no Chinese,
Latinos but no Latin Americans. In terms of publishing, if you are a Mexican from the
northern side of the Rio Grande, it is not very difficult to get published; if you're from
the southern side, it is almost impossible. There are probably less than a dozen
living Mexican writers who have been translated and published in the U.S., and only
two or three with some regularity. In contrast there are many millions of dollars
pouring into Chicano Studies departments, Chicano literary presses, special
collections at libraries, literary organizations, prizes, and so on. In terms of
Mexican-Americans, this is necessary and healthy, but it has also meant that, in
terms of translation, readers in the U.S. now have less contemporary Mexican
literature available to them than they did in the 1960's.

Translation is a necessity, for the obvious reason that one's own language has only
created, and is creating, a small fraction of the world's most vital books. It is also
perhaps the best source for the genuine news from abroad. And- contrary to what
many translation theorists say- it has nothing to do with cultural imperial hegemony.
Literature always moves through underground channels regardless of the dominant
and corporate cultures. Translation is not appropriation; it is a form of listening that
then changes how you speak.

For example: In 1913, Ezra Pound, inspired by his discovery of Chinese poetry,
wrote the manifesto "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste." Published in Poetry magazine
that year, it was enthusiastically read by a young Chinese poet named Hu Shih, who
was studying in Chicago. Hu returned to China and, in 1917, published his own, quite
similar, manifesto, "Tentative Proposals for the Improvement of Literature," which
became known as the "Eight Don'ts," and set off a literary revolution, the May Fourth
Movement of 1919. The story is more complicated, but it may be summarized as
this: Hu Shih found in American poetry what Ezra Pound thought he had found in the
Chinese. Like the protagonist of a Sufi parable, the poet went to the other side of the
world to discover what was at home. Perhaps it is a parable for all translation.

The necessity of translation is evident; so why is it a problem- or, as they now say,
problematic? Milan Kundera famously considered the poor translations of himself as-
and only a man would write this- a form of rape, and he characterized the bad
translations of Kafka as betrayals in a book called Testaments Betrayed. All
discussions of translation, like 19th century potboilers, are obsessed with questions
of fidelity and betrayal. But in the case of a writer like Kundera, who came of age in a
society dominated by the secret police, "betrayal" carries an especially heavy
weight. We know what a translation is supposedly a betrayal of, but is it unfair to ask
to whom the text is being betrayed? >>

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