Translation is a Love Affair

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A quietly affecting modern fairy tale told with humor and warmth, Translation is a Love Affair is a slender volume of immense humanity. A Quebecois novelist with a bad back and his vivacious translator discover a stray cat with an SOS attached to its collar. They embark upon a search for its owner, and when they discover a young girl with bandaged wrists they are drawn into a mystery they don't dare neglect. The world Poulin creates is haunted by dark memories, isolation, and tragedy, yet it is one in which languageand love are the most immediate and vital forces, where one human being hearing a cry of distress of another is compelled to shed one's own inhibitions to respond.

My Review: What a joy show more it is to discover such a famous novelist, he said with irony dripping onto his keyboard. In a properly order world, Poulin would be as well known in the US as in Canada, and just as justly celebrated.

This tale was a joy to read from "Naked as a trout, I was stepping out of the pond..." to the last spoilery paragraph. I finished it in a few hours, and read about half of it a second time. I am a sucker for stories of made families, as opposed to birth families; I love the idea of the love affair consummated by the intimate connection and tender caring actions of both people despite the long lifetime's difference in their ages. (Well, I would, wouldn't I, being a single mumble fiver now?)

After work he often called me to talk about this and that, or because he'd forgotten a word or the title of a book, or to ask me a question, such as: 'How can I keep brown rice from tasting like shrimp shells?'

Simple and direct, no ornamentation, a short passage sums up the flavor of a deep and cherished connection. That is fine philosophizing as well as deep thinking. show less

I am in love! The object of my affection is small, short, and translated, but my, is it wonderful. This book should really be shelved in the poetry section, for some of the lines are exquisite. The descriptions can be so captivating you have to read them twice, and the characters are good, kind, and lovable, just what is needed this time of year.

There is a plot. A young, talented, but rudderless translator meets the author whose book she is hoping to translate. The two are brought together through their love of words and by their need for love in their lives. Together they uncover a mystery: a note on a cat that leads to a young girl and a rather witch-like woman. But that is so beside the point. What the book is really about is words show more and language and the beauty that can be found in the perfect turn of phrase or in capturing the essence of a thing with words. Not only does an author need to find these things, but then a translator has to be able to capture the essence and style of the essence and render it into a completely different language. And to really blow your mind, this beautiful book about translation, is in translation!

But I’m gushing. In order not to ruin the book with too many of my own words, I was going to end with a few of my favorite quotes (hard chosen because the 144 pages of this book are covered in sticky notes until it resembles a hedgehog). But I was afraid that would ruin it: one person’s manna and all that. So I’ll just say that I hope you’ll be enticed to run out and buy this Archipelago treasure. And fall a little bit in love. show less

Marine is a translator working and living on an island, where she translates for the Quebecois author, Monsieur Waterman. When a black cat suddenly comes into her life with a mysterious message on the collar, Marine decides to figure out where he came from and if she can help his former mistress.

At only 144 pages this slight, deceptively simple story could be read in an afternoon, but I guarantee you'll be thinking of it long after. It's an exploration of all sorts of human relationships, as well as language and finding just the right word for describing something. It's lush and lyrical (and it was an odd experience reading about translation in translation since it was originally French) and lovely. On a blurb in the back, Alberto show more Manguel describes it as "the essence of our human condition: giving and taking, teaching and learning, experiencing and sharing experience, a love affair with our fellow human beings." And I can't really say it better than that. show less

This tranquil book is like a fairytale-ish love poem to words, language and translation. Set in and near Quebec City the book features two main characters. Marine is a young translator, just starting her career. Monsieur Waterman is an older, well respected author. Marine would like to translate Monsieur Waterman's books into English. After a chance encounter in a cemetery, and a second meeting at the library where Marine shows Waterman her attempts at translating his work, the two become friends. Because of the deaths of loved ones and their personalities they both lead small, quiet lives that don't include other people. An abandoned cat that wanders into their lives leads them to a mysterious troubled young girl. The mystery is show more secondary to the lovely sections on books, language and translation. The real story lies in Marine and Monsieur Waterman's shared love of language. The book utilizes multiple quotes about language from writers and translators. (One of the quotes led me to the wonderful travel writing of Isabelle Eberardt)
I read the beautiful Archipelago Books edition. This book was my lunch time at work read. Normally my co-workers are not at all interested in what I'm reading or interested in books in general. Someone actually asked me what the book was about and a small group of us actually had a wonderful conversation about language, translation and about how a translator who was translating a book about language and translation had better be really good. It was great. Then the book was passed around - everyone loved the feel of the textured cover - and my co-workers actually wrote down the name of the book so that they could go get a copy. I hope at least one of them actually reads the book.
Highly recommended. show less

Only 144 pages long but as compact and as dense a book for its ideas as some I've read at triple that length. Poulin is looking at love, turning it around to scry out its multiple aspects. But he is first and foremost a storyteller so the facts of his story compel us so much that the quiet understory about the translation of love takes a while to be felt, to make itself known.

His writing is deceptively simple, limpid and clear, and in Sheila Fischman's hands, this has been treated with respect. Marine is a young translator who loves words. She and Monsieur Waterman, an older writer, have struck up a relationship at first based around work but which has been evolving into something deeper. When a starving young cat is tossed onto the Ile show more d'Orleans property where Marine lives free of charge, courtesy of M. Waterman, the note found under its collar sets off an investigation to find the cat's owner. The story takes the reader to a slightly unexpected ending but one which is completely in keeping with the theme of the exploration of love.

The book is a little jewel in its physical form, being an Archipelago Books edition but the story is a jewel as well.
"Outside, the little girl from the end of the road had left. I brought the cats in, then went back to the interview, where the word house had caught my eye. Driven by the interviewer's questions, Monsieur Waterman said that for him, 'house' meant shelter, refuge. It was my profession that made me do it: reflexively I looked in the "Petit Robert". I offered an apology and a quick cuddle to old Chaloupe, who as usual had her head resting on the dictionary. Under the word refuge, I found this definition: "Small structure high in the mountains where climbers can spend the night."
In my opinion that was the best definition of a novel."

"Translation is a Love Affair" is indeed a refuge. This climber happily spent the night there. show less

This novella tells the story of a young French Canadian woman who is translating the work of a much older novelist. During the course of one summer, the two of them come to know each other very well through the solving of a mystery. That's not what the book is about. The book is about love and memories and healing and, most of all, words and the crafting of a sentence. Haunting prose and beautiful phrasing had me holding my breath at times.

"I spent the afternoon and part of the evening in a kind of torpor, broken by brief memories that , came back to me in the form of images or words. For instance, this remark that I'd noted during the class I just referred to: 'Every day, to keep me faithful to your text, my words hug the curves of show more your writing, like a lover nestling in her sweetheart's arms.' Milena had written that to Kafka." (Page 123)

Simply sublime and highly recommended. show less

In part, this is a story about Monsieur Waterman, an older author, whose shyness and reclusive work habits have caused him to set aside his friends. Mostly, it is a story about Marine, a young woman, somewhat troubled by sorrows from her past, "who had always been a nomad, who did whatever came into my head, who had already taken the first plane for anywhere, who didn't become attached to anything or anyone..." Almost by chance, they enter a relationship as author and translator and then, gradually, as each other's intimate friend, until their peaceful life is disturbed by hints of a young girl in a trouble that brought echoes from Martine's past.

The resulting story had a simple beauty that I found captivating. I'm not able to read show more Poulin's original text, but Fischman's smooth rendering was full of a love for language, for selecting the exact word to capture a note. I found myself listening to the murmurings under the story and reflecting on the various meanings of "translation", especially moving from one state or place to another, as I watched each person's life shift and move.

Looking back, it does, indeed, resemble a folk tale, not only in length and its neat little parcel of an ending, but also in its imagery—the wise, old man whose abode is described as a tower or the young woman living in the woodland cottage surrounded by animals. It even has a witch...or so the very young children call her. And, like a folk tale, it exuded that sense of familiar and human that I enjoy.

Recommended. show less