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Carrying a Single Life: On Literature and Translation | by Teju Cole | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

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You can enter multiple addresses separated by commas to send the article to a group; to send to recipients individually, enter just one address at a time. The English word translation comes from the Middle English, which originates from the Anglo-French translater. That in turn descends from the Latin translatus: trans, across or over, and latus, which is the past participle of ferre, to carry, related to the English word “ferry.” The translator, then, is the ferry operator, carrying meaning from words on that shore to words on this shore. Every work of translation carries a text into the literature of another language. Fortunate to have had my work translated into many languages, I am now present as an author in the literature of each of those languages. Dany Laferrière, in his 2008 novel I Am a Japanese Writer, expresses this slightly strange notion more beautifully than I can: When, years later I myself became a writer and was asked, “Are you a Haitian writer, a Caribbean writer or

Email Email to share with Send Send a copy to myself x You can enter multiple addresses separated by commas to send the article to a group; to send to recipients individually, enter just one address at a time. Print TWEET SHARE Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris/Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images A reproduction of a scene from an ancient Greek vase depicting the flight from Troy, with Aeneas carrying his father Anchises on his back, nineteenth century The English word translation comes from the Middle English, which originates from the Anglo-French translater . That in turn descends from t

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