Notes on Translation

Julio Cortázar, the best writer-translator

“I would advise any young writer who has difficulties in writing, if I were a friend of giving advice, to stop writing on your own for a certain time and make translations; to translate good literature, and one day you will realize that you can write with an ease like never before."

Julio Cortázar, in Conversations with Cortázar,

Ernesto González Bermejo

Julio Cortázar is perhaps one of the most known and representative examples of writer and translator. In fact, he is, interestingly, a translator who, having achieved great recognition as such became a renowned writer. Even he considered himself as a translator enlisted as a writer.

According to Cortázar which helped him most in his work as a translator was learning foreign languages from a very early age. Furthermore, the fact since the beginning of his life, as a writer, translation fascinated him.

Julio Cortázar (Brussels, 1914-Paris, 1984) was born in Belgium during the German occupation, the son of Argentine parents. The family lived for several years in Switzerland and Spain and moved to Argentina in 1918. He was a sickly child who stayed much time in bed, time he spent reading. His mother was always eager to make reading his son´s main hobby. She offered him very different books available from many distinctive authors.

That early love towards letters marked him, and soon he became a voracious reader, a fan of Jules Verne, Rimbaud, Montaigne and Cocteau, among others. In 1935, he obtained the title of Professor in Letters, and in later years as a teacher had several jobs, including that of French Literature Professor at the National University of Cuyo. Although he alternated teaching with his work as a translator, gradually this second occupation gained ground in his life.

His first literary translation was Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1945). In 1948, he graduated as a translator of English and French and began working for international organizations such as UNESCO and the Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna. Until 1951, he worked as a translator for the Argentina Book Chamber. That year, he and his wife by then, also a translator, moved his residence to Paris. Once in Europe, Cortázar continued working as a freelance translator for UNESCO, and in 1954 attended as a translator and editor at the agency's conference held in Montevideo. That same year he traveled to Italy, where he began the translation of the prose work of Edgar Allan Poe on behalf of the University of Puerto Rico.

In 1955, he published his translation of Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar, one of his most acclaimed translations, and from that year, without ever fully leaving his job as a translator, he began to pour into writing. He definitely made France his permanent residence, and in July 1981, President Mitterrand awarded him with his French citizenship.

A prolific translator

Among the books translated by Cortázar, and without being exhaustive, we can mention the following: Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe (Buenos Aires: Viau, 1945), G. K. Chesterton: The Man Who Knew Too Much (Buenos Aires: Nova, 1946), Walter de la Mare: Memoirs of a dwarf (Buenos Aires: Nova, 1946), André Gide: The inmoralista (Buenos Aires: Argos, 1947), Henri Bremond: pure poetry (Buenos Aires: Argos, 1947), Alfred Stern: Philosophy of laughter and tears (London: Magnet, 1950), Louisa May Alcott: Little Women (Buenos Aires: Codex, 1951); Marcel Ayme: The Viper (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1952); Ladislas Dormandi: The Lives of Others (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1952), Marguerite Yourcenar: Memoirs of Hadrian (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1955); Jorge d'Urban: "Preface" to Music in Buenos Aires, Virgil Thomson (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1966), Carol Dunlop: Children Full of trees (Managua: Nicaragua-Monimbó New, 1983), Edgar Allan Poe: Works in prose (translation, introduction and notes J. Cortázar, Rio Piedras: Publishing University of Puerto Rico, in collaboration with Revista de Occidente, 1956, 2 vols.) Edgar Allan Poe: Tales (Havana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963), Edgar Allan Poe: Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym (Havana: Book Institute, 1968), Edgar Allan Poe: Eureka (Madrid: Alianza, 1972).In February 1984, Cortázar died in Paris.

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