LA Review of Books on TRANSLATION AS TRANSHUMANCE
Via LARB:
"Translation as Transhumance, and Gansel’s practice as described, champions the use of language that cannot be instrumentalized — on which fascist ideologies have no grasp. In her poignant foreword, Lauren Elkin — a writer and translator herself (adding a third intra-lingual female practitioner to the book) — links Gansel’s practice to Rimbaud’s famous statement, je est un autre: I is another; or, the Self is the Other; or, I is someone else. Even in the English translation, Elkin leaves the phrase in French — allowing it to speak the layers and volumes of interpretation it has accumulated over time. After all, as Gansel herself has written toward the end of the book: “It suddenly dawned on me that the stranger was not the other, it was me. I was the one who had everything to learn, everything to understand from the other.'"
Read Emily LaBarge's full review here.
Mireille Gansel
This half memoir, half philosophical treatise is a humanist meditation on translation.