Читать книгу Revenge of the Translator - Brice Matthieussent - Страница 17

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* Dumbwaiter, le serviteur muet. Here, once again, the author misleads his reader with a web of prejudices, all humiliating to my profession. In fact, the dumbwaiter, le serviteur muet, is a goods elevator that, in certain old New York buildings, is at the disposition of its tenants. It’s also a vertical pass-through that you sometimes find in a restaurant. In Great Britain it’s a dessert stand. Comparing a translator to a dumbwaiter, a goods elevator, a serving hatch, or a dessert stand makes my blood boil. For, in the end, without this pass-through, the author wouldn’t have any say in the matter. And if I serve him soup, it’s only this poor substitute that allows him to stay, somehow, above the bar: not the solid, rustic, homemade broth, but the sachets of freeze-dried powder whose exact composition we would rather not know.

Or else, kind reader, my author is a poor stage actor who doesn’t know a single word of his text. And I, hidden from all gazes except his in the prompter’s hole, whisper his lines to him one by one; I read his text in a drone, I feed him beakfuls. From my lips he takes his sonorous nutrients and immediately spits them out for the delighted public who, nine times out of ten, see nothing but fire. Invisible, I brood at the bottom of my obscure opening while in the spotlight he brims with pride.

The following comparison the author makes is even more unpleasant. He equivocates the translator David Grey with a lazy Susan, une Susan parasseuse. A lazy Susan is a rotating tray installed in the middle of the table in certain restaurants, especially Asian establishments! (Toiler’s Nausea)