| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.153.238.132 |
How many people hear worry about reading translations of fiction works? Do they avoid them because they feel that any translation cannot possibly reflect the true work itself stylistically? Or do they treat the translation as a new work in itself and judged accordingly? Or do they not think about it at all? I ask this in the light of linguistic nuances etc in various words. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.153.238.132 |
hear = here a mistranslation?  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.0.114.254 |
In a really elaborate writer like Flaubert, yes. Not so fussed with a less, uh, 'energetic' prose - eg, Tolstoy. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.169.163.57 |
A Ukrainian friend tells me that John Norman benefits greatly from translation into Russian and becomes almost readable. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.177 |
The original is always to be preferred. I started out reading Lovecraft in Dutch, then moved on to French translations and finally got around to the genuine article, all because his work was so devilishly hard to find. Discovering the 'real' HPL felt like entering another realm altogether. Those worthy translators were quite unable to keep the poetry of his language intact, or even convey the utter, well-nigh suicidal bleakness of his world. Conversely, I would never read a French-language author in English. Every language has its marked set of linguistic possibilities, its proper arsenal to create shadings of meaning unavailable in the other language. French/English is perhaps not the best example, because of the historical connection, but I'm currently developing an interest in Japanese and already I can see certain possibilities unavailable in the four languages I know. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.153.238.132 |
As a great lover of Proust (in English) (although I have read the first volume in French back in the heady days of 1968) - I am a torn personality on this issue. I am hoping for various angles on this subject from the good RCMBers so that I can finally mend my personality on the issue. (As you can possibly tell from my real-time reviews, I put a lot of weight on semantics, graphology, phonetics and syntax). Thanks to you who have responded so far. | ||
| Coral (Coral) Username: Coral Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 90.216.127.4 |
It's difficult to give an opinion on translations from a language I don't speak. In order to tell, you'd be need to be fairly fluent, I should think. For myself, I only speak French and German, and yes there is a difference between the original and the translation. As to books I have read translated from Russian, I don't see how I could possibly say, short of embarking on a Russian course. Even so, some idiomatic message maybe lost unless you'd actually lived there and conversed extensively with natives. I think, unless one is anal to the point of pedantry, as long as you're enjoying what you read and getting something out of it, it's not the most important thing. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.177 |
Some double entendres or other calembours are difficult to translate. When I cannot find any reasonable equivalent for a passage or string of words involving, say, a lot of wordplay I make a note of it and invest some other passage with what was lost, always taking care not to change the general meaning. It's either that or prepare a text riddled with footnotes. | ||
| Coral (Coral) Username: Coral Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 90.216.127.4 |
Hubert, not everyone is a linguistic genius like you, but that's good advice. You even speak Japanese!!! Would an internet translator do an adequate job of bits you were unsure of? | ||
| Clive (Clive) Username: Clive Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 81.104.165.168 |
I do not really think about it much. I do not speak another language apart from English and the only language i have spent a number of years learning to read is Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphic and that tends to be more like a code breaking session rather than enjoying the beauty of the text (although i do have a book of The Tale Of Peter Rabbit in hieroglyphs which is fun). As such, it really doesn't cross my mind that the Kafka, Borges or Schulz that i am reading has gone through the translation filter and may of course have lost much. I guess it may be at the back of my mind but short of dedicating a long time learning a new language there is not much i can do about it. I'm not as dedicated as Beckett. I do find it interesting reading different translations of the same story and comparing them, though, which i have done with some Schulz and i seem to remember some Haruki Murakami. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.177 |
Would an internet translator do an adequate job of bits you were unsure of? I avoid them like the plague. I have lots of dictionaries here, some of them quite old (my Larousse is from 1914) and I'll use digital dictionaries as well (the well-known van Dale series which one can buy on cd). For English I mostly use van Dale and the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary set. For technical stuff there's the Duden series. I don't speak Japanese yet, but am quite motivated. I'm even willing to find me a Japanese girlfriend to speed things up a little :-) Thanks for the compliment, but no, I don't consider myself a 'linguistic genius'. Let's say I have a penchant for languages. Probably all that Latin and Greek I did as a schoolboy . . . | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
What other way have we of reading some of the greatest works of literature other than through translation - topmost of which, for me, would be Dostoevsky, Kafka, de Maupassant. I don't beat myself up about my inability to read Russian or any other language. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.190.19 |
It doesn't bother me in cases where I know that the writer him/herself has had input, and is relatively competent in the language into which the work is being translated. As a for example, Zoran Zivkovic, who speaks English far better than some who have English as their first language. I'm happy that the translations capture the intent of the original, and he works so closely with his translator that I'm sure thing that he wasn't happy with would be put right before a final version appeared. I have to say, though, that I do have doubts about some of the translations I've read (not, incidentally, of Zoran's work). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.153.238.132 |
I don't beat myself up about my inability to read Russian or any other language. ========================== Nor do I, Stephen. I suppose the question is (acting a bit as Devil's Advocate) -- there is so much good English Literature originally written in English (all of which one will never get through in one lifetme) that it seems counterproductive to resort to reading translations that are (however good a translation) at least one step removed from the original, the original with all its potential nuances of language etc.?? One possible answer to that queton --- a translation is a new work in itself and should be judged separately from the original. Indeed, the translator may be more skilled than the original author - or a synergy of the translator and original author is better than the original author in his own language??? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.177 |
At any rate a good translation should make the reader forget he's reading a transcript of the original text. The Inquisition chapter in The Name of the Rose has been called a tour de force and in translation it remains just that - an accomplishment of some magnitude. You're right about the synergy between author and translator, Des. When one is translating pulp stories which were written in a huff and a puff one is tempted to add a certain amount of literacy which wasn't there in the first place. One shouldn't, of course. But if the original language is only so-so, should the translator abdicate his right of silent intervention? Phenomenally difficult question. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Interesting one this. I can't really add much on the subject of translation - since I can't read any other languages besides English, I can't compare works written in another language with their English translations - but I've got a little thought to add, linked to what Hubert is saying about whether the translator should "add anything" to the original. In my brief dabbling into amateur editing, I had a story to edit which had been written by an Indian author. Although written in English, it had obviously been written in a second language and needed quite a bit of editing. But I considered it very important indeed to retain the author's "voice". The story as it was could only have worked with his voice and, in particular, it needed to retain much of the original turns of phrase he had used. I considered completely Anglicising it, and then decided it just wouldn't work that way (and would have been unfair to the author). It was a very difficult piece to edit, so I can see the difficulty any translator must face. You must have to "get inside the head" of the original writer and be able to somehow convey the same thoughts on paper, in the same literary style. My task was tiny by comparison. It worked, and the author was happy with the result (I hope readers were too!). But it's made me aware of the difficulties of translation - even though this wasn't a translation as such. Which brings me to another related question. Is it just the language used or is there some element of trying to retain the original *culture* too? In my example above, I definitely wanted to retain the culture of the original work too. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.177 |
I think one should try and retain as much as possible, if even one doesn't have the same world view. It can never be exactly the same of course, and even a single individual can go through so many changes that, looking backward at the things he wrote in his younger days, it's as if he were looking at another personality altogether. Recall Lovecraft's view of his younger (arch-conservative) self: "What an ass I was - only [...] years ago." | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.153.238.223 |
I think this topic of 'translations' indicates that nothing is ever an exact science. Religion, politics, literature, business, philosophy, all subject to dynamic changes of consensus and individualisation ... all in the attempt to maintain - throughout or via continuous Toynbeean challenge-and-reponse - a human need to prevent life becoming 'lost in translation'. RIDER: This is a lesson for many discussion forum threads, I feel, here and elsewhere, just as long as the new-fangled interweb provides both opportunity for opportunity as well as dangers of loss...but, whatever you think, for good or ill, the interweb is an already indelible challenge-and-reponse in the above process. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.78.35.185 |
Some interesting writers are only accessible in translation, and in several cases I think you can "feel" if a translation does justice to the original text, there is something that feels right about the flow, even without understanding the original. For example, I always preferred Alfred Birnbaum's translations of Haruki Murakami over his current translators Jay Rubin and another guy whose name eludes me. Birnbaum's prose always felt "right" to me. In fact I find less magic in the Murakami books that were not translated by him. Not that it matters to the people here, but I have the same satisfaction when reading Boris Akunin's delicious Fandorin novels translated from Russian to dutch (check out The Winter Queen to discover the first Fandorin book in English). When it comes to the classics, I think that people are often put off reading those Russian behemoth volumes that exist as dirt cheap editions, reprinting an old translation. In the case of War & Peace (which I really should pick up again) there is a recent translation by a Russian-Brit couple which really brings unexpected sparkle to the text, something sorely missing from the cheap Wordsworth reprints. Finally, I mentioned Leo Perutz in two other threads, well if you're curious I think you'll have a pleasant experience reading the English translation. |