“A KINGDOM FOR A CIGARETTE” Cover Image

“A KINGDOM FOR A CIGARETTE”
“A KINGDOM FOR A CIGARETTE”

Author(s): Simona-Catrinel Avarvarei
Subject(s): Romanian Literature, Translation Studies
Published by: Editura Arhipelag XXI
Keywords: literature; translation; reading; memoirs;

Summary/Abstract: This paper visits some of the thoughts Antoaneta Ralian shared with her public throughout her long and amazingly prolific translating career. Antoaneta Ralian toiled with the minute religiousness of a hesychast that listens to the chant of the wasteland to unravel the mystery locked in each and every one of the 125 novels and plays she translated. She believed that the translator has to gain access to what lies hidden in the text, subtly interposing the decoding wish in between thought and translation. The translator sets the text free as long as it preserves its intrinsic wealth and beauty. The text is no longer a ‘closed’ narrative (Umberto Eco), as long as the translator deciphers its inner mechanisms ‘forcing’ it to reveal itself, opening it towards unlimited semiosis. Quoting various fragments from the last volume of memoirs she published in 2016, Nu cred în sfârșitul lumii [I do not believe in the end of the world], I take a bow of honour to one of the most beautiful minds of the Romanian culture.

  • Issue Year: 2017
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 764-769
  • Page Count: 6
  • Language: English