Revenge of the Translator

December 1, 2018

DEBUT In a novel called Translator's Revenge, American David Grey is translating into English Abel Prote's latest novel N.d.T. (i.e., Note du traducteur, or "translator's note")--and getting sufficiently aggravated by the task that he installs a virus on Prote's computer to muck with words, sentences, even paragraphs. In esteemed French translator Matthieussent's award-winning debut novel, a mysterious translator called Trad is translating Translator's Revenge--and getting sufficiently aggravated by the inadequacies of the text that he corrects errors, adds and deletes material willfully, and finally roars off into wholesale invention. Matthieussent's novel opens with just footnotes from Trad explaining what he's doing and why; the top half of the page, where the actual text would be, is blank. Eventually, as contretemps between Grey and Prote escalate into existential crisis, it's hard to distinguish the original story (which we've initially had to intuit) from Trad's interjections. VERDICT The concept is brilliant, the writing luscious, and the portrait of translation-as-creation absolutely apt; great fun for sophisticated readers, who will revel in this celebration of language itself. Bravo, translator Ramadan.

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