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THE SUBVERSIVE SCRIBE: TRANSLATING LATIN AMERICAN FICTION. By Suzanne Jill Levine. (Saint Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1991. Pp. 196. $12.00 paper.)
TRANSLATING LATIN AMERICA: CULTURE AS TEXT. Edited by William Luis and Julio Rodriguez-Luis. Translation Perspectives no. 6. (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Research in Translation, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1991. Pp. 348. $15.00 cloth.)
O PODER DA TRADUCAO. By John Milton. (Sao Paulo: Ars Poetica, 1993. Pp. 195.)
Latin America is both producer and consumer of literary translations, although in unequal proportions. The list of Latin American writers whose works in English translation have achieved recognition among North American and European readers in the last twenty-five years is an impressive one. In addition to reading Nobel laureates Miguel Angel Asturias, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Octavio Paz, English-speaking readers have become acquainted with the works of such figures as Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Jose Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, Jose Lezama Lima, Mario Vargas Llosa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Manuel Puig, Isabel Allende, Jorge Amado, Alejo Carpentier, Luis Rafael Sanchez, and Ariel Dorfman. Another tier of writers who are less known but highly esteemed by critics might include Alvaro Mutis, Rubem Fonseca, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Reinaldo Arenas, Moacyr Scliar, Edmundo Desnoes, Luisa Valenzuela, Severo Sarduy, and Nelida Pinon. All of them have been translated into English, and many into other languages as well.
This roll, however striking, is tiny when compared with the many talented and original Latin American voices that are unlikely to be heard outside their native language and their country of origin. It is perhaps inevitable in the economic scheme of things that even in their original languages, many works of merit never go beyond their initial limited printing. In Brazil, for example, except for such towering figures as Jorge Amado and Rubem Fonseca, the normal press run is a mere three thousand copies, not all of which find their way into bookstores and libraries.
Moreover, the proportion of translations is radically skewed in favor of English-language source materials. While exact figures are unavailable, one can safely estimate that for every Spanish- or Portuguese-language work translated into English, scores of English-language novels and nonfiction works are translated into the languages of Latin America.
A browse in any well-stocked bookstore in...