ABSTRACT
The translation that establishes an equivalency between baskets and shields is a fiction, a lie. The metaphoric equal sign between baskets and shields tells it’s all make-believe. So translation establishes imaginary or metaphoric equivalencies. The translation of a text from one language into another, the rephrasing or paraphrasing of a text in the same language, the transmutation of words into visual images. The conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner graphically represented this idea in a 1969 piece composed of two wedge-shaped pieces placed back to back. Perhaps a solution to the translation of Philip Roth into Spanish would have been a translator from a Jewish community in Mexico, Chile, or Argentina. If the novel had been translated into a Mexican context, there would have been the possibility of finding more creative or nuanced ways of dealing with the fair-faced Swede versus the darker shades of the Jewish complexion.
