Analysis Of Michael Cunningham's 'Found In Translation'

The purpose of this report is to present the essential ideas exposed by the writer Michael Cunningham in a lecture entitled “Found in Translation”, which took place on March 22nd at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences and was integrated in a 3 day cycle of conferences organized by the Association of Portuguese and Anglo-American Studies (APEAA).
This lecture was clearly directed towards a more mature, older and English-speaking audience. Despite being open to the public in general, the greater number of people attending belonged to APEAA.
The premise of the lecture was that as an English writer, Cunningham’s work is translated into other languages. Therefore, the author focused on making an analysis of the process of translation which
However, independently of the changes, the translator has to make to the original piece of writing, it is imperative that he is able to reproduce the musicality and strength of a sentence.
To illustrate this, the author briefly applied the technique to the first sentence of Melville’s Moby Dick – “Call me Ishmael” – saying it in English and in Portuguese so the audience could compare both versions and perceive how despite the changes in sonority the sentence was still as powerful as in the original language.
Following this, the author also considered the translation of specific expressions, habits, objects, etc., since their existence and meaning differ hugely from culture to culture which is the case of saying something such as “driving into the mad American night”. This idea of leaving everything behind expressed in Kerouac’s On the Road is absent in other cultures, thus making it complicated to arrive at a similar expression in another language that is not
Although Cunningham didn’t speak spontaneously, reading from a piece of paper, it was still incredibly interesting because he read with a certain musicality and which made me stick until the end and anxious regarding what he was going to say next. Furthermore, all his arguments were clearly illustrated with examples which made the task of assimilating ideas easier.
Translation is certainly not an area of particular interest for me. Nevertheless, the content of the lecture was truly compelling because it allowed me to understand what kind of relationship an author establishes not only with his translators but also with his readers.
Finally, as far as the audience is concerned I felt a bit lost in the middle of it but Cunningham’s words somehow included me because the concepts he mentioned were not tough to follow even though I probably have way less knowledge on the topic than the rest of the people that were