The Second Life: On Translating Literature Into Farsi And Life Into English

The mobility came up astatine an Infinite Jest translators’ panel, connected a Second Life platform. A ٰvirtual tennis tribunal was designed. Virtual bleachers, virtual audience, virtual copies of our translated books scattered crossed nan court. Each of us, Wallace’s translators crossed nan world, embodied successful an avatar, pixelated, pinch delayed staccato flashes of movements. At immoderate point, nan big asked really Wallace was first translated successful our respective countries. I said that his first translations had appeared connected a government-funded website called Tarjomaan—a connection that intends some “translation” and “interpretation”. The first 2 pieces published were his celebrated commencement reside and All That, a fabrication from The New Yorker, which, for immoderate reasons, has been branded arsenic an “essay” successful nan Farsi version, some chosen—one would assume—because of their belief undertones.

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“Wow,” nan big said. “So your authorities is willing successful Wallace?”

Well, yeah, isolated from that they were some censored erstwhile it came to belief nuances, I thought.

I didn’t cognize really to explicate specified a delicate matter without oversimplifying, without overcomplicating. It’s thing that needed to beryllium told precisely aliases not astatine all. I looked astatine my avatar, nan 1 I had deliberately chosen, pinch a disguise shaped for illustration a deformed casket—a motion to nan Union of nan Hideous and Improbably Deformed,  nan ones successful Infinite Jest who cloaked themselves to openly admit that they are hiding something, not comfortable pinch sharing but besides exposing themselves to stock that they are hiding something. In nan Second Life panel, I was grateful for it – masking myself, admitting that I can’t get afloat exposed. I could person tried to explicate nan intolerable contradiction. But I didn’t. I shrugged— nan avatar didn’t —“It’s complicated.” I said.

When I was successful school, we would statement up each morning, perceive to a recitation of nan Qur’an—Arabic, untranslated, stripped of context, conscionable a axenic form—before listening to nan ideologies of Islamic Republic, past stomping connected an American emblem connected our measurement to class. And yet, American worldly was everywhere, moreover successful my comparatively mini town. The first American movie I ever watched was a worn-out VHS of Titanic. I didn’t cognize overmuch astir nan story—the shipwreck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet—nor did I care. What mattered, successful my teenage years, was the kiss. The glimpses of passionate love, nan flashes of nudity. ٰ

I had ne'er seen my parents kiss. In fact, I had ne'er seen anyone kiss. And location they were, Jack and Rose, successful each their glitched VHS glory. Oh, they kissed (I didn’t rather understand why). Oh, they are beautiful, handsome (I vaguely understood why). Oh, they are American, for illustration my cousin’s uncle who had allegedly moved to nan US. Also, to double up my excitement, video players were banned successful Iran successful 90s, truthful watching Titanic, a samizdat, was an illicit pleasure, some exotic and vulgar, consumed successful secret, silenced not to make my parents awake, ever nether nan threat of getting exposed to my parents, or, arsenic I was convinced, constabulary officers.

Then location was Delta Force, nan video game. You played arsenic an American soldier, sidesplitting enemies successful mini towns, deserts, battlefields. You mightiness person died, but past you respawned, weapon successful hand, fresh to commencement again. Fighting for what? I ne'er asked. I ran done pixelated landscapes, looked done my crosshair, clicked, shooting nan bodies off. They said a connection I didn’t understand, truthful why should I care? Until 1 day, successful a caller type of Delta Force, nan enemies connected nan surface were speaking my language, Farsi. I hesitated. I moved astir to find different enemy. Yet nan men shouting successful Farsi were moving away.

At immoderate constituent I was numbed to my language, it mislaid each of its meaning. I pulled nan trigger. A man, his sound crying retired successful Farsi that they (meaning me) are here, dropped silently to nan ground. The crippled wasn’t over. The warfare continued. If location was a warfare different than this pixelated one, a taste warfare arsenic our authorities perpetually reminded us, I hadn’t known I was portion of. And yet, location I was—stomping connected a bleached American emblem connected nan asphalt of my school, watching American films successful secret, shooting Iranian fighters connected a pixelated battlefield, shouting Death to America successful nan morning.

How do you construe your acquisition into a connection that hardly knows immoderate discourse of your life? From whose acquisition are you writing? Are you conscionable yourself, aliases a self-appointed spokesperson of a nation? Don’t flatten it, they say. Don’t generalize. Stay pinch what you’ve lived.

So you outgrow PC games. You commencement reference what your relative publication arsenic a teenager—Salinger, Faulkner, Iranian writers. You spot yourself much successful Holden Caulfield than successful nan aged man of The Blind Owl. You go embarrassingly alert of your body—this awkward, fleshy point that sweats, grows, disappoints. You commencement chatting pinch girls online, veiling yourself down words and emoticons. You constitute blogposts to impressment them. And you do. But you stay an ID, a username, a smiling yellowish look successful their friends database connected Yahoo! Messenger. You autumn successful love, retired of love—both cleanable worldly for writing. Though, successful truth, you constitute much astir an image of being successful emotion than experiencing it.

You effort to find your voice, imitating translated writers—Hemingway’s clipped restraint, Nabokov’s exquisite exile, Proust’s telescopic elaboration. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t resonate. It’s not yours. Still, you support writing. For someone, for a beingness you can’t pinpoint—a protector of yourself, maybe, surviving successful nan abstraction betwixt you arsenic a writer and what you were writing. You want to carve thing meaningful retired of nan messiness of your mind, to untangle your emotions. That’s each that matters. And sometimes, you do.

A communicative astir a narration that loops without breaking—not because it’s perfect, but because nan replacement is unbearable. You constitute it aft a conflict pinch your first real girlfriend—the first 1 who jumped retired of nan world of avatars and usernames, nan 1 pinch whom you effort to beryllium real. You think: This is it. This is writing. This is real. She doesn’t for illustration it. It exposes you some excessively much. You nonstop it out. A literate mag publishes it. You get immoderate feedback, tons of congratulations. You cod your stories. A prestigious patient slides a statement crossed nan table. The Author, it calls you. You are thrilled. After navigating censorship, nan book makes it out. You clasp it successful your hands—years of writing, thin, weightless. It’s not what you expected. You consciousness exposed. And fraudulent. It holds excessively overmuch of you, and yet it doesn’t sound for illustration you. A veil.

How do you construe your acquisition into a connection that hardly knows immoderate discourse of your life? From whose acquisition are you writing? Are you conscionable yourself, aliases a self-appointed spokesperson of a nation?

You hide yourself moreover more, now equipped pinch literate devices to obscure what’s excessively revealing. You cling to nan sound you’ve found—or astatine slightest nan 1 you deliberation has worked. But you recognize it lacks substance. You’ve grown. You’re not conscionable an individual floating done nonaccomplishment and isolation anymore. You are portion of a society. You excavation deeper, constitute different collection, this clip astir longing for connection. Shame. Shame of nan body, shame of desire, shame of failing to connect, shame of silence, of veils you slow acknowledged, done writing, you were wearing. You initially telephone nan book The Real Life. It gets banned. Not everything successful your existent life tin beryllium expressed publicly, they show you. And suddenly, you understand what nan shame was about—the veils person been imposed systematically. You are really portion of a taste war, dictated ideologies. You are ashamed that you admit this excessively late.

You return a break. You show yourself lit is astir bridging cultures, not waging battles. You punctual yourself you are besides a translator. You construe books, past dive hesitantly into Infinite Jest, doing other acrobatics to support Wallace’s rhythms intact while dodging censorship. You take words, tweak them, gaffe them past nan The Ministry of Cultural and Islamic Guidance. No 1 astatine nan agency is paid capable to comb done a thousand-page novel, you show yourself. Just make judge nan activity scenes don’t show up pinch a azygous click successful MS Word’s hunt function. And you succeed. And past you are disgusted pinch yourself. You’ve forgotten why you started penning astatine all. You’ve developed unnecessary muscles for movements that aren’t aesthetically relevant—to Wallace, to yourself, to anyone isolated from nan ones who trim nan books. You person a writerly deformed body. You haven’t written thing successful a agelong time, anyway. You’ve conscionable fled.

You show yourself it’s clip to travel backmost to writing, but your tegument has hardened. Your lexicon has calloused. You expect erasure earlier words moreover form. You constitute pinch that difficult skin. You repetition yourself successful iterations, circling nan aforesaid themes, trying to find a measurement to pierce done repetition. You haven’t caught up pinch your age—you’re not 20 anymore, not 25. But your sound hasn’t changed. The exhaustion of a taste warfare has dissociated you from yourself, from your writing, from your existent life. You recognize you are numb to your ain language. A shooter firing aimlessly, pinch an quiet gun.

And past you retrieve translation, really liberating it was to unrecorded successful nan abstraction betwixt languages. You commencement translating again—this time, translating your life successful Farsi into English. A life excessively unsettled to beryllium called life. Here, location is room for discovery. More audience. No scrutiny. And yet, you are little equipped to opportunity what you really mean. You stumble through. You miss penning successful your language. You miss nan easiness of thoughts spilling onto nan page. When you didn’t person to explain, aliases overexplain, aliases warrant contradictions—because everyone astir you shared them. You each knew nan rules of nan game. You each had lived done watching a forbidden buss connected TV. You had each been torn isolated successful nan taste war. You each person learned nan vocabulary of making love from Friends, only to find it lacks constituent successful a world of intersexual suppression. You know, acknowledgment to years of translating English into Farsi, that translator ever comes pinch guilt, shame, condolences for what is lost. Except this time, you don’t cognize what will beryllium lost. But past again—who are we? And who are you to speak of a corporate experience? Who are you to determine what is mislaid and what is gained?

Let’s commencement again. With me. I’m champion known—whatever that means—as nan translator of David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest in particular. I wrote successful Farsi for 15 years, until 1 day, I didn’t. Until nan weight of censorship made each condemnation consciousness for illustration an enactment of futility, a puzzle pinch missing pieces, a condemnation scattered by dotted lines. So I started again, successful English. I wrote essays and fabrication successful English. But it ever felt for illustration I was reporting from Iran, an exotic state acold away, alternatively than penning astir myself. I was overexplaining, overloading each portion pinch context, arsenic if Iran itself needed footnotes.

Whenever I translated an English book into Farsi, I resisted nan impulse to simplify, to soft things out. I wanted nan matter to beryllium arsenic accessible—or inaccessible—as it was meant to be. Quirks intact, tweaks preserved. I refused to interpret, to explain, to insert apologetic footnotes astir taste gaps that whitethorn aliases whitethorn not request bridging.

With Infinite Jest, this was an particularly fraught decision. There was excessively much. Too overmuch context. Too overmuch America. Too overmuch wrong tennis and media culture, ostensibly overseas to its Farsi readers. But then, America, though acold away, was ne'er really foreign. America had ever been omnipresent—an enemy, a glitch VHS, a smuggled CD of a forbidden movie, a translated novel. Either group knew nan context, aliases they didn’t. And if they didn’t, they could judge that not everything successful a caller needs to beryllium grasped for illustration an instructional manual. Some things conscionable exist. You besides can’t conscionable import discourse wholesale—its lineage, its autochthonal soil, nan aerial it was meant to breathe. Infinite Jest exists successful Farsi, but it’s been uprooted, rehomed, severed from its original genealogy. And translation, astatine its best, is astir opening up a space, uncovering caller aesthetics, a communal crushed to research inside. That is, if nan scholar is consenting to read. But a totalitarian authorities isn’t a reader. It dictates.

Every regime, particularly a totalitarian one, requires an enemy. Wallace understood this—Johnny Gentle of Infinite Jest reflects this. The Islamic Republic, from its inception, positioned itself successful guidance to imperialism, to nan forces that propped up nan Shah, astir specifically, nan United States. We are nan ones who roseate against corruption, against empire, they declared. The champions of nan weak. The Mostaz’afain. The inheritors of nan earth, arsenic promised successful nan Qur’an. And for that to hold, nan force had to beryllium absolute. The Kafir, nan infidel, nan decadent West, nan poison threatening Iranian prosperity, Islamic culture. The conflict had to beryllium waged—Jihad, aliases Cultural Jihad, successful this case.

If you person an enemy, you are astatine war. And if you are astatine war, past anyone who complicates nan narrative—who dares to adhd nuance—is a liability. The omnipresence of an enemy, arsenic our history has bloodily taught us, justifies everything. Turning inward. Suppressing your ain people. Even, aliases especially, erstwhile you erstwhile positioned yourself arsenic nan sound of nan weak, nan righteous unit against power. Unlike video games—where things (actually people, nan ones without connection aliases whose words dissolve into thing meaningful) simply rustle up—literature inherently opposes immoderate ideology. requires plots, characters, contradictions. It resists simplification. It cherishes life. It offers individual stories, replacement ways of being. It creates a abstraction wherever writer and scholar meet—not to singing doctrine, but to explore, to imagine. And to different furniture to nan paradox: nan government, for each its ideological rigidity, still had to contend pinch a rising taste people that nary longer bought into nan ideology that had made nan Revolution imaginable successful 1979.

Whenever I translated an English book into Farsi, I resisted nan impulse to simplify, to soft things out. I wanted nan matter to beryllium arsenic accessible—or inaccessible—as it was meant to be.

And so, nan authorities needs to find caller rhetoric. It adapts. Any philosopher pinch a whiff of anti-imperialism, nary matter really complex, is warmly welcomed—so agelong arsenic they tin beryllium reshaped. Some don’t request immoderate adjustment, truthful enthralled by nan rhetoric of guidance against power—imperialism arsenic nan eventual villain—that they wholly hide ideology intertwined pinch powerfulness tin beryllium a instrumentality of oppression, silent unit against home people, making nary fuss connected nan world stage. For ideologues, translator is ne'er astir nan dynamics betwixt 2 cultures; it is astir bringing backmost a souvenir from farang—that aged Farsi connection for overseas lands, from nan 19th century, erstwhile elite Iranians first wandered disconnected to France, aliases Europe successful general, dazzled by Western splendor—stripping it of context, turning it into earthy worldly for yet different shape of propaganda.

These were nan things my avatar ne'er said. On Second Life, successful English, astatine a literate arena celebrating taste exchange, I shied distant from nan existent answer. The honorable reply would person been: I play connected a wholly different field. Except they pulled maine backmost in.

As I pulled myself aside—as some writer and translator—trying not to navigate censorship but to defy it, to carve retired caller ways to prosecute lit successful an wholly different ecosystem, Infinite Jest was published successful Farsi. It gained momentum, it sold well, it was read—hopefully. The translator was criticized, praised, nan accustomed regular of nan book of that magnitude. I was asked, again and again, astir censorship. I alluded vaguely to our efforts, acknowledging concerns without drafting excessively overmuch attraction to what had been salvaged.

Then nan very agency that had fto nan book gaffe done shortlisted it for Best Translation of nan Year. Nothing to beryllium happy about. For context: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children had won nan aforesaid grant 4 years earlier nan fatwa was issued successful 1989. Of people they did, I thought. Wallace is nan cleanable shiny caller toy. A literate beast, already sanctified by superior book-readers, thoroughly engaged pinch America’s taste contradictions. He was ideal—an American who is besides skeptical of America’s taste machinery. Perfectly suited to beryllium extracted —not conscionable from American culture, but from lit itself. I wouldn’t be this ceremonial anyway, I thought, I americium done pinch that office, I americium nary longer successful nan game, moreover if it meant I became a pixelated type of myself, pushing maine further distant from my language. Then nan turmoil of thoughts of deep-buried (hi)story.

How overseas it is to consciousness angry erstwhile your activity is really acknowledged, emotion shameful, regretful of really you person been dragged successful nan crippled again, emotion responsible for getting progressive involuntarily successful a conflict you avoided. “I carnivore nan wounds of each nan battles I avoided.” Pessoa erstwhile wrote and I recalled. Shame still resided successful my body, and anger, and memories. I went connected reference nan book connected my laptop – I still don’t situation to look astatine nan people type – to cheque what was trim away. Three lines of a activity segment that Hal imagines. Then I stumbled connected a sketch of a location that 1 of my characters lived in, pinch comments connected each portion of furnishings and really he obtained them. He was a portion of me—not a cloaked one, but an embodiment of thing I thought I had yet find a sound for. It was each earlier nan location sewage invaded by governmental ideology. I had different translated books that were ne'er published, location successful my erstwhile laptop – now group up for downloading movies, mostly American ones.

I was reminded how, successful nan Iranian panels of Infinite Jest, I was introduced simply arsenic a translator, not a writer, arsenic it had been agelong since I had published anything. They had forgotten that I erstwhile wrote successful Farsi. I had forgotten what penning felt like. What had been lost, unconsciously, was portion of maine that was yet embodied successful Farsi. Part of maine was – and still is – stuck there, successful nan words, yet to find a break out. It was past midnight. A dim lamp formed ray successful a area of my flat, and nan acquainted ever-present hum of Tehran streets abruptly felt muted. I was recoiling, re-imagining my past self, trying to perceive my voice, this clip though, unexpectedly, successful English, possibly because nan Farsi type of angst felt for illustration an anti-government statement—a sound that, nevertheless unlikely, could still perchance origin existent harm.

This time, nan soundlessness was not for illustration watching the buss in Titanic, but boldly opinionated against nan ones who some praised and silenced you astatine their will. I felt that if nan floodgate of words opened, they would flood. English words though were conscionable tickling alternatively than flowing. I could not link nan dots of a representation successful measurement that I utilized to do successful Farsi. Yet I felt unveiled, unpixelated – nan shame of penning successful different language; nan rage of losing touch pinch an aged location successful Farsi; nan representation of aged bully days not yet settled into communicative successful English, trying to operation themselves up successful a connection that would ever stay for illustration a 2nd life; nan consciousness of nonaccomplishment of nan first life – erstwhile a existent life, that you person been told you cannot narrate it. And then, slow yet suddenly, dawn appeared. A bladed seam of light. The words had recovered a benignant of rhythm—not successful English, not successful Farsi, but successful nan abstraction betwixt nan 1 who had lived successful Farsi and what was to beryllium written successful English. I realized I could ne'er tally distant from Farsi, ne'er unrecorded extracurricular it. My life, my memories, are successful Farsi; my recollection of them, possibly not. I had lived successful it. I unrecorded successful it. I constitute successful English. And I yearn to build a life location successful between.