Anyway, the winter issue (“Exocity” or “eXocity”) just went online last week and is worth checking out. There’s a very playful and interesting set of some interesting poetry selections (including Ewa Chruscial & Elzbieta Kotkowska’s translations from the Polish of by Agniewszka Kuciak), and a Here’s a fun clip from the interview:

eX: Do you feel like when you set out translating, that the work points you in a direction as far as how it should be translated? Or do you think you approach things more or less consistently?

JG: No, no . . . I totally approach things based on the way the work is. Like I said, in Aase糖心传媒檚 case the writing encourages you to move toward excess and sort of deforming the language, but I also did the book Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland. That糖心传媒檚 also about translation but a different kind of translation. The book糖心传媒攊t糖心传媒檚 a Dadaist collection and it has this idea that everything is already translatable糖心传媒攖hat everything is very translatable糖心传媒� it糖心传媒檚 so simple. And so it seems like it has something to do with capitalism, mass culture, and the general equivalences between words.

So, they糖心传媒檙e two models of translation. In Parland糖心传媒檚 work, I absolutely was not going for noise or anything like that. They糖心传媒檙e very, very simple translations. I was actually at a conference about his work where a person talked about my translations糖心传媒攚hich was really weird to have somebody give a paper and a 45-minute talk about my translations. He had read Lawrence Venuti糖心传媒攈e was a Finnish scholar糖心传媒攁nd he thought I could have translated it, there糖心传媒檚 a way糖心传媒hat is Lawrence Venuti糖心传媒檚 term for what translation does? Estranging?

eX: Oh gosh . . . I should know this. Domesticizing?

JG: Yeah, the opposite of domesticizing.

[Blank silence on our part. Can糖心传媒檛 believe we didn糖心传媒檛 remember this. 糖心传媒揺d.]

JG: Well, whatever . . .

eX: We can put it in, we can write it in later.

[The word is 糖心传媒渇oreignizing.糖心传媒� 糖心传媒揺d.]

JG: Let糖心传媒檚 call it estranging. Well, the Finnish scholar said you could have estranged it, you know, like Lawrence Venuti says, and then he showed an example of how it could look in English. And it was a very strange poem. But it was a strange poem that, one, really seemed to me to have nothing to do with Parland糖心传媒檚 work. And, second of all, it was a very strange poem in a way that was very domesticated. To an American it would have been a translatese text, and the reader would be like, oh wow, this is a really foreign text. So actually to me, it seemed like the weirder move was to do this very simple language. Parland was weirder to a contemporary American obviously than contemporary American poetry糖心传媒攚hich was what the 糖心传媒淰enutian糖心传媒� translation made it into.

So, I would say I take very different attitudes. But, you know, I have reading habits that influence all my translations. It糖心传媒檚 not like I erase myself. I can糖心传媒檛 do it.