Editing
 

By Samantha Hill
Magdalena Edwards offers a brilliant account of her experience translating Clarice Lispector in the LA Review of Books. Navigating the unmarked side streets of publishing, Edwards walks readers through the process of translation while thinking about the gray line between editing and ideas, who gets credit for their work, and who gets thanked for devotion. 

In the summer of 2017, my name appeared in the New Directions catalog of titles forthcoming in winter 2018 as the translator of Lispector’s The Chandelier. Though Moser’s name was not listed, he was already well known as the series editor of the new Lispector translations. Lispector’s The Complete Stories, translated by Katrina Dodson and published in 2015, had brought Moser and the entire enterprise loads of positive attention. Dodson was the sixth in the crew of new Lispector translators, which included Alison Entrekin, Stefan Tobler, Johnny Lorenz, and Idra Novey, who each translated one of the four novels published in 2012. Moser’s version of The Hour of the Star, published in 2011, was the first in the series. His role as editor is prominently featured in each of the new books translated by other hands, and he also wrote the introductions for three of these. Both Novey’s translation of The Passion According to G. H. and Dodson’s The Complete Stories include a “Translator’s Note.” I knew I was joining a lively ensemble, but I had much to learn about the new Lispector enterprise. And in order to learn it, things would first have to fall apart.

In the end, when The Chandelier was published, I was credited as the co-translator with my name after Moser’s. The truth is that Moser tried to get me fired, arguing that my completed manuscript was not up to snuff, that my level of Portuguese was insufficient, and that he would have to rewrite every line of my translation. What happened?