In a pocketable flourish, Galaxia presents itself as a compact manifesto of ideas rather than a mere object. Edited by Gutenberg, its significance rests not on volume but on the weight of thought it carries. The preface, attributed to a nomadic cultivator named Pierre Tellène, offers a sly admonition: conquest should never crown a summit. Translation here is framed as motion—a translator, a writer, a reader all arrive with every possibility in hand, yet never pretend that the journey’s origin belongs to themselves alone. Galaxia Gutenberg’s arrangement of Mireille Gansel’s volume embodies this mobile, translational spirit—traversing borders, shifting meanings, and always mindful of its starting point. The idea that translation equals relocation is explicit, yet the author remains anchored in her roots. The Spanish edition by Ariel Dilon adds another layer to a bibliography that often stays quiet on the art of translating. It is worth recalling luminous discussions on translation, such as Nuria Barrios’s lively essay La impostora or the thoughtful reflections found in Jordi Doce’s poetry criticism, all of which keep the dialogue vivid.
Translation deserves elevation beyond technique or an auxiliary task. The common cliché argues that universal literature requires translation; it is equally valid to insist that translations deserve to be read with reverence rather than scorn. Nuria Barrios’s view, echoed by Mireille Gansel in Translation as Trashumar, casts translation as an act of writing a book twice: a poem translated becomes a letter that feels both distant and intimately near. The act of translating then becomes a creative act, not a secondary endeavor but a primary form of literary production.
Mireille Gansel Yaylacı Translate as Galaxy Gutenberg 168 pages / 16,50 euro INFORMATION
Gansel’s book is presented as a pragmatic guide to living with the tension between craft and vocation. It traces a biography where the translator and the author share a single path, turning Translation as Transhumanar into a coming-of-age narrative. The translator, grounded in German, Vietnamese, and poetry, embodies resilience as the child of Jewish refugees who grew up in postwar France. Family ties kept languages alive that once risked being lost in the furnace of persecution, turning language into a priceless asset. The work argues with quiet insistence that translating is a humane act, a means to render another life legible in one’s own voice.
Several pivotal moments define the author’s journey. The discovery of Brecht’s poetry opened new possibilities for viewing translation as a spectrum and as listening to the many tonalities of a text. The passage portrays translation as clay upon which one models an inner language, letting language unfold like a house whose windows reopen after a long hush. The result is a literature that breathes more freely, a translation that participates in life rather than merely copying it.
The Vietnam era marks another crucial hinge in Gansel’s work. During America’s campaign, European intellectuals traveled to the United States to voice solidarity with the Vietnamese cause. Translation and publication of poetry from local writers became a means to universalize the conflict and draw attention to it. From this period onward, some of the most enduring reflections in Translate as Transhumanar emphasize fidelity to a text as preserving its humanity and universality. Translating grew into a practice of listening between lines, to hear echoes beneath the surface of a city’s silence. The Asturian translator Mateo Pierre Avit, who recommended the volume, recognized how translation can illuminate a work’s deepest resonances and broaden its reach across cultures.