Book Recommendation: Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri

Leave a Comment / Book Recommendations / SBT / 07/10/2024

Book Recommendation: Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri

Sometimes, a book recommendation is not straightforward and can be subjective; what resonates with one reader might bore another. However, Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri is a profound exploration that translators, bilingual writers, writers who work with translators, and anyone interested in literature, translation or language are going to thoroughly enjoy this read. This collection blends personal reflection, literary analysis and insights into the writing and translation processes. This read is definitely recommended!

Translating Myself and Others

Translating Myself and Others is a collection of eleven essays examining translation, self-translation, literature and language by award-winning writer and literary translator Jhumpa Lahiri. Throughout the book, Lahiri shares both her identities as a writer and as a translator. This mix of personal and more theoretical essays is as much an introspective journey through the complexities of language as it is a reflection of the relationships between the intimate act of translation and identity. Lahiri is probably best known for her Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999 for her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, and her debut novel, The Namesake. But when she took up learning Italian, her career took a turn and underwent a transformative reshaping: she started writing in and translating from a language that was relatively new to her.

Translation has transformed my relationship to writing. It shows me how to work with new words, how to experiment with new styles and forms, how to take greater risks, how to structure and layer my sentences in different ways. Reading already exposes me to all these, but translating goes under the skin and shocks the system, such that these new solutions emerge in unexpected and revelatory ways. Translation establishes new rhythms and approaches that cross-pollinate the process of contemplating and crafting my own work. The attention to language that translation demands is moving my writing not only in new directions, but into an increasingly linguistically focused dimension.

Page 7 - Introduction

Identity and Language

Lahiri’s concepts of belonging and identity are deeply rooted in her life experience as the daughter of Indian immigrants. Born in the U.K. and raised in the U.S., she reflects on her personal journey with language and identity. Across the eleven essays, Lahiri shares thoughts and events in her personal life that shaped the way she deals with language as a part of her identity: When she started learning Italian at forty-five, Lahiri hadn’t expected it to be as formative as it had been. It was also a turning point in her writing career; it ignited an unknown passion for this new language, so much so that she decided from that moment on to write only in Italian. She made the conscientious decision to adopt Italian as a choice; it is impossible to choose one’s heritage or mother tongue, but she had the power to choose this language and work with it. Choosing Italian expanded her understanding of the mechanics of language and her writing, and it forced her to confront the limitations she faces when she both writes/translates in English and Italian. Alienation and otherness become evident, but she smoothly and cleverly surfs these sentiments to work with them rather than against them.

In the essay “Why Italian”, translated by Molly L. O’Brien in collaboration with Lahiri, she uses a graphic metaphor for learning and mastering a foreign language: there are two main doors and smaller ones, and opening each one of those doors has its challenges, goals, and rewards. She uses that image repeatedly to illustrate how her identity as a writer and, more importantly, as a person is shaken by this confrontation:

The more I write in Italian, the more I feel in turmoil, suspended between my old knowledge of English and the new door in front of me. I’m forced to acknowledge that there is a distance between me and both languages. Sometimes I fear that the next door will be boarded up. Writing in another language reactivates the grief of being between two worlds, of being on the outside. Of feeling alone and excluded.

Page 14 - "Why Italian"

This sense of otherness and exclusion resonates throughout the book; she is constantly confronted with the implications of writing in a language that feels both foreign and personal to her:

Italian, in my opinion, is a door more inclusive than exclusive. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been possible for me to write In Other Words. That said, even today, when I write in Italian, I feel guilty for having broken open a door I shouldn't have. This new language has turned me into a burglar. This is the strange effect of the question, Why do you know, speak, and write in our language? The use of the possessive adjective, our, underlines the fact, banal but painful, that Italian is not mine. The process of writing and publishing a book in Italian involved opening another series of doors: all the people with whom I worked, discussed, corrected, and cleaned out the text. I ask of each person, May I write this sentence, use these words, combine them like this? That is: May I cross the border between me and Italian? May I come in?

Page 15 - "Why Italian"

This idea of someone else’s language is then repeated in “Lingua/Language”:

That said, the ongoing phrase – “Lahiri scrive nella nostra lingua” (“Lahiri writes in our language”) – means that Italian remains, by definition, the language of others as opposed to my own.

Page 131 - "Lingua/Language"

Lahiri also delves into a different duality when it comes to her different roles and identities: she acknowledges that she is two different selves when translating and writing as each of them acts and reacts differently to the text.

It is imperative for me to know a text in order to translate it: I must know not only what it means, but how it comes to mean what it means. As a writer, caught up in the act of writing, I am far more ignorant, and even unconscious, of what I do. The heady self-involvement of writing can be at odds with a more distanced perspective.

Page 51 - "In Praise of Echo"

Self-translation and its Challenges

Lahiri finds the act of translating herself eye-opening and challenging, as language shapes the identity and self-translation can be a complex negotiation: sometimes she chooses to translate herself, and sometimes she chooses to work with other translators. In the essay “In the Praise of Echo”, she discusses the idea of self-translation and how the hierarchy of original and translation fades:

To self-translate is to create two originals: twins, far from identical, separately conceived by the same person, who will eventually exist side-by-side.

Page 57 - "In Praise of Echo"

Self-translating can be described as a never-ending editing process, an idea Lahiri shares in “Where I Find Myself” in an interesting snippet on her experience of self-translating Dove mi trovo/Whereabouts that illustrates effectively how that process can come to be. This process becomes a complex negotiation of identity and voice that often requires her to confront her writing through the lens of translation. While translating the book into English, she saw her work through the eyes of a translator, not as a writer; the errors, mistakes, and repetitions kept on jumping at her, and it became imperative to fix them as they could not be unseen. As a consequence, she embarked on the magnificent task of correcting the original, making notes for a revised Italian version while still translating the original into English.

A Personal Favourite

“Traduzione (stra)ordinaria/(Extra)ordinary translation – On Gramsci” is one of the most interesting reads I have encountered in a while; it awoke a sense of curiosity that felt dormant. This is the longest essay in the book and probably the most technical and thorough of the collection. In it, Lahiri shares her process and experience reading Antonio Gramasci’s letters and Prison Notebooks in preparation for a talk she was invited to give about the new edition of Gramasci’s Letters from Prison, in Italian. She studies and analyses various letters to explore this Italian writer’s venture to translate works from German and Russian. This is a man who had translation imprinted on his being, with a lifelong struggle of feeling pulled by different languages and different Italian dialects. Consequently, she finds herself as a writer and a translator reflecting on this man; she even draws a parallel between Gramasci’s life in prison and her life during the pandemic.

Personal and Professional Collision

Particularly following the pandemic, the importance of having a clear division of work and personal life has captured the shared psyche. Nevertheless, as a collective, we have come to accept that the borders can become blurred, and the final essay, “(Afterword) Translating Transformation – Ovid”, is a clear example of how our personal lives are intertwined with every aspect of our existence. Undoubtedly, this last essay is the most personal and intimate of the set; it is a personal memoir of her mother’s final stages of illness and death. This narrative is beautifully written, and it invites the reader to witness a very personal and vulnerable stage of Lahiri’s life; where she took on the challenge of translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses from Latin while her mother, her life, and her relationship with Italian were all transforming into something different. Lahiri reflects on this parallelism throughout, ultimately translating her mother’s final absence into a deeper appreciation for:

...everything that is green and rooted under the sun.

Page 155 - "Afterword"

Final Thoughts

Translating Myself and Others is more than enjoyable; it feels rewarding. Though there are some concepts that are recurrent, and for some, it might feel a bit repetitive, each time those concepts appear, they are brought up under a new lens or Lahiri eloquently adds something new to the conversation. She is definitely an inspiration both as a writer and as a translator. Her thoughts are a reminder of the power of language and the effect it has on the interpretation of life experiences. She constantly highlights the importance of translation as a bridge between languages and cultures and a means of self-expression and exploration. This magnificent book is a beautiful collection that invites to welcome the richness that language diversity can offer and all the great stories that unfold thanks to the collision of worlds.

Bonus Track

All the essays in the collection are in English; a couple of them were originally written in Italian, and their translations are included in the main body of the book. In the appendix, Lahiri has added the originals in Italian, so anyone curious about language or translation can find delight in comparing the two versions. A nice and fitting addition to a book about literary translation.