The Broken Chandelier
Coda (8.16.2020)
One big focus in this post is on what’s missing in the translator contract between Magdalena Edwards and New Directions. Read this as a cautionary tale. Plenty of gigs in literary translation come through your friendship network. But if things go off the rails, you’re on your own. Make sure you have a contract that protects you. Have your contract vetted by a lawyer. If you join the Author’s Guild a contract review by a lawyer is a membership benefit. At the very least, look at A Translator’s Checklist for Negotiating Contracts, presented at the 2016 ALTA Conference. —Margaret
Original post dated 8.21.2019
The translator Twitterverse exploded last Friday after the Los Angeles Review of Books published Magdalena Edwards' incendiary article about a translation gone awry, "Benjamin Moser and the Smallest Woman in the World." An insider's account of her experiences working with Benjamin Moser and New Directions as the translator of Clarice Lispector's The Chandelier, Edwards' narrative paints a grim picture of what would otherwise seem like a stellar project—to work on a previously untranslated novel by an internationally renowned writer, as part of a well-received series put out by a prestigious publisher. As Edwards relates it, a cordial long-distance acquaintance formed with series editor Benjamin Moser over their shared interest in Lispector, Elizabeth Bishop, and translation was a prelude to being asked to take on the project in 2015. Things quickly turned sour, however, after Edwards sent her draft translation to Moser in the summer of 2017. "The truth is that Moser tried to get me fired, arguing that my completed manuscript was not up to snuff, that my level of Portuguese was insufficient, and that he would have to rewrite every line of my translation. What happened?" she asks, drawing us into the messy tale that follows.
Her account is a rare instance of a translator parting the curtains to reveal behind-the-scenes dealings with an editor and a publisher over a contested translation. While Edwards goes on to make a larger argument against Moser, giving instances of his borrowing from the work of others, almost all women, without giving credit, I'm especially attuned to the "wrongs" of this particular translation project and wondered what conditions made such a situation possible. Based on Edwards' account and my own reading between the lines, I understand the following: Yes, there was a contract, and it was strictly between the translator and New Directions. No, it had no provisions setting the terms of the working relationship between the translator and the outside series editor, who appears to have been given carte blanche in overseeing the series. No, there were apparently no revisions made to the contract to reflect the fact that the outside series editor (Moser), not the publisher (New Directions), would deem the manuscript acceptable or not. No, there were apparently no specific provisions about what an acceptable translation would be, giving the publisher, or rather, in this exceptional case, the outside series editor, lots of wriggle room. Barbara Epler of New Directions seems to have deferred to Moser's judgment in offering Edwards a "kill fee" i.e., thank you for your trouble, good-bye. But before offering the kill fee—something not in the contract and improvised by the publisher as a way out— did Epler ask Moser for some justification? Was any outside reader asked to look over the translation and weigh in? Or was it simply a matter of Moser's word and his steamrolling vision of how Lispector had to read in English?















