Translation Response Week Five

This is a response to Ashley's blog post found here.

   I find myself questioning the reinsertion of footnotes because as you have said, it seems to make the piece harder to read. I question the fact that it brings the reader closer to the original text, it seems to do just the opposite, because it might be translating more than what was in the original. I believe it was Eco who warned against bringing more to the translation than what was originally in the text. I find that footnotes do exactly what they are supposed to do: fill in the blanks without being intruding to the text but when the footnotes are reinserted as part of the text, it takes away from what the original was trying to convey.
    In can see how this eliminates the necessity for the extra pages of information, but how many of the questions regarding the reinserted references are actually answered? Footnotes, in my opinion (and Mary Jo Bang is sparse with hers), are more helpful in the end than the reinsertion technique seems to be. I’m curious as to how the footnotes in the text works with James’ idea of foreignizing. It seems footnotes in the piece would aid foreignizing because of the convoluted nature of each new line. However, he also talks about how this is making the piece accessible to the reader, but it doesn’t seem that way in reality. It’s like a contradiction.
    Plus, he keeps a rhyme and rhythm, so that must also help to keep the piece a little foreign, but not in the sense that he was aiming; it butchers the English to fit so many different spaces: from the footnotes to the rhyme, the English language is doing more work than the Italian did in the original and that’s where I find the translation most interesting. It seems as though James and Bang (and maybe even Carson) are creating more work for English than Dante created for Italian.