Sunday, October 15, 2006

Mehr News: "Translator having trouble with Hemingway short stories"

A bit odd, but interesting:
Najaf Daryabandari is having a number of troubles in his translation of Hemingway’s short stories.

“The translation of the first volume is going to be finished, only three stories of it remain, but nowadays Najaf works very little. Illness has prevented him from doing everything,” his wife Fahimeh Rastkar told the Mehr News Agency on Saturday.

“However, we don’t expect publishers to welcome the translation because some of the Hemingway books that Najaf translated over the past few years are rare, but the publishers don’t republish the works,” she added.

Since 2001, Daryabandari has been translating “The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway”, which comprises 99 short stories and was published by Random House in the Unites States in 1979.

“It is a difficult situation for the publication of stories (in Iran), so Najaf is not very interested in finishing the work. He prefers to spend his time on theoretical works,” Rastkar said.

Daryabandari previously rendered Hemingway’s love story “A Farewell to Arms” and novelette “The Old Man and the Sea”.

“Translating Hemingway’s longer stories is not very difficult, but when I was translating his short stories I had problems with some of them. His style of writing differs from one to another due to the subject of the story. The short stories take a long time to translate,” Daryabandari said.

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