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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment

Where translators fear to tread

How’s this for an opening line: “We caught a cold when we were coming” (A translator’s incisive essays explore the inner life of fiction, Review, 15 November). It was this howler that prompted my husband, Erich Fried, to make a bid as translator of TS Eliot – or so he told me (and I don’t think he could possibly have made it up). He translated almost anything; I know of only two texts he baulked at: Jesus Christ Superstar (and that wasn’t because he didn’t like the text) and, predictably, Finnigans Wake, apart from about 12 pages. A recent BBC programme credited his translation of Under Milk Wood as making Dylan Thomas famous in Germany, shortly after his death.

Incidentally, Erich translated straight into German poetry at (only a slow-ish) dictation speed. I was painting him while he translated Shakespeare, so I know. It astonished and appalled me in equal measure.
Catherine Boswell Fried
London

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