In praise of bad translations

Chris sent me a message that included the following extract from an interview with Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. In my view it encompasses some of the ideas we have already discussed as a group willing to exchange and read literary works that 'can can resist mutilation, the loss of numerous pages and even a shit storm.' Here are the words that push this boat into water...

Interviewer: Is it disturbing to think we have read many of our gods (Joyce, Stendhal, Proust) in translation, in second-hand versions? Is that literature? If we spin the matter around, it's possible we might end up concluding that words don't have an equivalent.

Roberto Bolaño: I think they do. Furthermore, literature is not made from words alone. Borges says that there are untranslatable writers. I think he uses Quevedo as an example. We could add García Lorca and others. Notwithstanding that, a work like Don Quijote can resist even the worst translator. As a matter of fact, it can resist mutilation, the loss of numerous pages and even a shit storm. Thus, with everything against it - bad translation, incomplete and ruined - any version of Quijote would still have very much to say to a Chinese or an African reader. And that is literature. We may lose a lot along the way. Without a doubt. But perhaps that was its destiny. Come what may.