Читать книгу Revenge of the Translator - Brice Matthieussent - Страница 22

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* I’m still sneaking around under the bar, thumbing my nose, picking up my crowbar, wedging my shoe between the door and the frame. As you’ve just learned, dear reader, David Grey is having problems with Abel Prote, the French novelist whose most recent book, bizarrely titled (N.d.T.), David is translating: misunderstandings, mistakes, disparaging allusions, suspicious looks, skipped meetings, various obstacles, reciprocal irritations, etc. In short, there’s trouble brewing between the French writer and his American translator. I sincerely hope not to have the same problems with my author. His emails are courteous but vague, at times cryptic. For example, when I asked him about the meaning of the expression “Agenbite of Inwit” which appears in his text to qualify the culpability felt by the unfortunate Grey who is convinced that he’s botched his work, my author replied to me with disarming and scandalous flippancy that it’s “a quotation from Joyce.” A lot of good that does me! Am I going to reread every single work by the Irish exile, looking for these three sibylline words? Nevertheless, in “Agenbite of Inwit,” I detect something to do with bite and of course Inuit. What does the subarctic population have to do with anything? Do the Inuit bite?

Stand aside, the door is about to slam! I pull back my shoe just in time (I still don’t have a crowbar). (Translator’s Quote)