Despite the many challenges in bringing his work into English, New Directions published a new collection of translations of Gozo’s works, Alice Iris Red Horse, last fall. But to call this collection simply a work of translation feels like underselling it, and not just because there are interviews, photos, and extensive notes collected alongside the translations. There’s something unique about these translations. By convention, we consider translation a unidirectional process between two objects. There’s a “source language” that gets rearranged and recoded into a “target language.” Certainly, theorists have problematized this and pointed out the many ways “source” winds up altering “target.” Others have tried to map the complicated process that occurs within the black box of “translation.” But this whole schema feels not quite right for discussing these translations.
PoetryEastWest 