8 Books Every Translator Should Read (Craft of Translation)
Artist and author (and translator) Diego Jourdan Pereira shares eight books he believes every translator should read.
I have said this before and will say it again. Every time I seek to learn or perfect a given craft, the first order of business is to go out and get my hands on any and all books I can find on the profession, be them modern editions or obscure, out-of-print volumes in the second hand market.
“Why not simply look for a video tutorial—or podcast, or blog post—at your platform of choice?” the uninitiated may ask.
“Because any trade worth pursuing has creators devoted and generous enough to pour their hard-won know-how into writing in-depth accounts of their experiences for the benefit of those of us standing on their shoulders,” is usually my answer.
“So which books would you suggest I read to become a professional translator?”
I’m kidding, no one’s crazy enough to ask me that, but presuming you are reading this precisely because you’re giving the craft a degree of consideration, here’s eight books—from the technical to the life affirming—I wholeheartedly recommend.
Thinking Spanish Translation, by Michael Thompson, Louise Haywood, and Sándor Hervey
No college? No problem! As an author of Spanish and English language books, this thorough reference tome spared me a whole lot of higher education fees and campus strife, if not the focus required to take advantage of its many useful lessons, and I bet it will do the same for you.
Routledge’s superb ‘Thinking Translation’ series also includes Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian and Russian volumes.
The Art of Translating Poetry, by Burton Raffel
Before translation gained an aura of “cool” among the cultural pundits, Burton Raffel did a great deal in popularizing the profession within the Anglosphere and, I would argue, beyond its boundaries too.
The Art of Translating Prose, by Burton Raffel
Some years after The Art of Translating Poetry, Professor Raffel expanded on the very different task of effectively translating prose, in this sequel that surpasses the original in both scope and originality. At the very least, its final chapter—“Translating Cervantes”—should be compulsory reading for any Spanish-English translation studies program worth its salt.
Translating Myself and Others, by Jhumpa Lahiri
This collection of elegantly verbose essays explores the many intersections between life and translation while positioning Professor Lahiri—an exophonic novelist in her own right—as the Pallas Athena of the craft, inspiring us all to challenge and push our intellectual boundaries in its pursuit.
In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, Edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky
Packing a wealth of real-world translation history and experience, if Santiago de Chile had a beach, this is the book I’d bring with me for reading under a parasol, dipping my toes in the warm sand while plunging into a different chapter—by renowned translators and authors ranging from Esther Allen to Eliot Weinberger—each day.
This Little Art, by Kate Briggs
The one thing I believe the previous anthology could use is an abridged version of this 350 page monograph by Kate Briggs that reads more like a first-person novel or diary. If you’re serious enough about translation to wade through its pages, it is as rewarding as they come.
The Translations: Frederico García Lorca, Nicolás Guillén, and Jacques Roumain (The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Vol. 16), by Langston Hughes
The widely-traveled, supremely talented Hughes wasn’t a translator by trade, but rather an author who translated other writers he felt a kinship for on account of the adversities they faced, be them political, racial, or sexual. Collecting several translations—long out-of-print in individual form—makes this book a rare gem.
Pereira Maintains: A Testimony, by Antonio Tabucchi
The story of Pereira, a widowed, omelet-loving Portuguese literary translator who gradually rises against the salazarista regime, naturally struck a cord in me during the pandemic—read it while in bed with Covid 19 no less!—and helped me find the courage to become a translator myself.
