From Here On, Monsters by Elizabeth Bryer

Author:Elizabeth Bryer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760787554
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

Several browsers drifted into the shop throughout the afternoon and while Jhon helped with their requests I thought about Charles and tried to convince myself that he was fine. Eccentric and preoccupied, definitely—but fine.

To distract myself, I asked Jhon to print out the newest part of his translation for me to read. I was impatient as the printer warmed up, as he worked out which pages to print, as he changed the settings and loaded the printer with a stack of paper.

‘Wow, you’ve changed the formatting,’ I said when finally he handed me the pages. ‘Fancy!’

‘Because this is what you were saying.’

‘About Szilard, you mean?’ I kept my voice low and noticed that Jhon was doing the same.

‘He believed it was important to give his writing the same form as the source itself, no? So I was thinking, maybe my translation could do this also. Maybe it should do this, if it is to call itself a translation. But how? I can’t replicate the writing experience, that is sure—I need to stay here in the bookshop—but I can reflect the reading experience.’

‘Next thing you’ll be ditching the computer to write it by hand.’ I grinned, and was surprised when he responded seriously.

‘I thought about this. It was what first came into mind, but I threw away the idea. And I threw away the idea of searching for material that is similar to write on. Too difficult.’

I thought Jhon looked a little piqued. He smoothed the sheets of the printout. ‘What is the same for me and Szilard, though, is that he wasn’t writing in his first language. I am not translating in my first language either; I think this makes us a good match. And with the formatting like this, at least now, when you read it, you will be flipping the pages top to bottom of the translation, the same as I flip the pages of what I’m translating, the same as any reader of Szilard’s work flips those pages. At least you will be reading the same number of lines per page and reading around the space in the middle. Wait,’ he stretched out a hand for the pages, ‘let me pierce the centre—’

‘It’s fine like this.’ I laughed. ‘Szilard’s work has found its ideal translator, I can see.’

In all the work’s centuries of existence, the first time the Sinbad translation entered the historical record was when it came into the Spanish noblewoman Isabel Barreto’s keeping. The translation had possibly been in her family for generations, yet between its creation in Alfonso the Wise’s royal scriptorium in the thirteenth century and its presence in Barreto’s life in the sixteenth, it is unclear whose hands it passed through.

She came across it in the family library as a child, and refused to part with it, or at least that is implied in a family portrait dating from that time. In it, her father is at the centre with his sons ranged behind him. One son gazes at the viewer, another looks bored, the third’s expression is blank.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.