Examining & analysing translations

[Eric]

In early June 2008, I gave a workshop at the Society of Authors in London, examining several aspects of translation. We examined passages, where I had removed the name of the author or clues as to what book it was from. We then looked at differing aspects from texts by the following authors:

Am?lie Nothomb - the title, the book cover
Kristien Hemmerechts - culture-specific aspects
Alex de Pfeffel - a translation or an English text?
Lars Huld?n - dialect
Dovid Bergelson - transliteration, punctuation, notes
Guillaume Branlelance - a punning French passage
Guido Cavalcanti - archa?c translation, complexity of vocabulary
Boleslaw Lesmian - neologisms
Ingrid Winterbach - English from other parts of the world

It went pretty well, although it was an evening session on a hot day, when people had already had a workshop in the afternoon.

I thought that people here could contribute passages from translations (where they can scan them or find them on the internet). And the rest of us can compare notes about an aspect that the person contributing the passage can select.

 

[Mirabell]

wow very cool idea. i'm in.

 

[Eric]

Another idea of mine was to start threads on those aspects of literary translation that I introduced at the workshop, and similar ones.

So, for instance, one on titles and the reasons for changing them, with examples. Because we have had some here already, but they have got a bit lost, scattered around the website.

Transliteration is a thing I often come across. Because when you translate Estonian, it's the same alphabet, no problem. But when Russian names are mentioned, you have to be on the ball. Because ?ostakovit? is not how we spell the composer's name.

Neologisms, portmanteau words and puns, as in anything approaching Finnegans Wake, are also a serious challenge to the translator. Portmanteau words are new words made out of two others like motel (motor hotel) and brunch (breakfast & lunch).

The Cavalcanti thing I did at the workshop involved straightforward Italian poems and songs from the 14th century that had been mysteriously translated into a very weird form of archa?c English. This, to me, was against the spirit of translation. So, absurdly, you sometimes had to look at the medi?val Italian to find out what the English translation meant!

Where to put the notes is also a whole debate in itself: at the bottom of the page, or grouped at the end of the book.

An allied problem is whether an introduction frightens readers away, making the novel look too scholarly. Is an afterword the solution, when the novel comes from a culture unfamiliar to the reader?

Dialect is also a difficult area for the translator.

By English from other parts of the world I meant, in my concrete workshop case, an Afrikaans novel that had been translated into English - but for a South African audience. So the S.A. reader reading the English version would understand spruit, veld, and dorp, but a Briton or American may not. What is the solution? Alter the translation, or add notes?

And so on. Most of these things will have to be tackled within the space of any one novel you translate.

 

[Stewart]

So, for instance, one on titles and the reasons for changing them, with examples. Because we have had some here already, but they have got a bit lost, scattered around the website.

There's Proust: Remembrance Of Things Past or In Search Of Lost Time

Karinthy Ferenc's Metropole, originally called Epepe, who is a character from the book.

Mention of Primo Levi's If This Is A Man and Survival In Auschwitz (US) on the Pablo Neruda memoirs thread, itself the subject of a changed title.

Plenty more, too.

 

[Eric]

Thanks, Stewart for collecting a few title-changes together.

I know that not everyone here loves Nothomb, but the example I used in my workshop was the following:

French title (original): Robert des noms propres
Dutch title (named after the hero?ne): Plectrude
English title: The Book of Proper Names

As those of you who are familiar with French will know, Robert is not a bloke but a series of dictionaries. So the title would not work in either English (Oxford, Chambers, Webster's) or Dutch (Van Dale) as referring to specific dictionaries would be misleading and distracting.

I rather liked the Dutch title, because the name Plectrude sounds as daft in English and Dutch as it does in French, which is one of the points of the book: the protagonist or hero?ne has this daft name forced on her by her mother who found it in the Robert list of names.

 

[Mirabell]

The Cider House Rules is called Gottes Werk und Teufels Beitrag in German translation, after how the protanonist's mentor describes his profession as director of an orphanage and abortion-performing doctor. I have a comment by Irving on this somewhere, Irving being a reader and speaker of German. The french title corresponds to the German one, I believe. Funny how these two titles stress a very dfferent part of the story, The German/French one the beginning/end of it and teh protgonist's vocation, and the English one mostly the middle and the "adventure" and the romance.

 

[Mirabell]

Thanks, Stewart for collecting a few title-changes together.

I know that not everyone here loves Nothomb, but the example I used in my workshop was the following:

French title (original): Robert des noms propres
Dutch title (named after the hero?ne): Plectrude
English title: The Book of Proper Names

As those of you who are familiar with French will know, Robert is not a bloke but a series of dictionaries. So the title would not work in either English (Oxford, Chambers, Webster's) or Dutch (Van Dale) as referring to specific dictionaries would be misleading and distracting.

I rather liked the Dutch title, because the name Plectrude sounds as daft in English and Dutch as it does in French, which is one of the points of the book: the protagonist or hero?ne has this daft name forced on her by her mother who found it in the Robert list of names.

German one is Im Namen des Lexikons (In the name of the lexicon)

 

[Stewart]

Funny how these two titles stress a very dfferent part of the story, The German/French one the beginning/end of it and teh protgonist's vocation, and the English one mostly the middle and the "adventure" and the romance.

Or, in the case of a pirated translation of Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose in Tunisia, the most miniscule scene: Sex In The Monastery.

The Name of the Rose is known to have been released in Tunisia in an Arabic pirate translation as ”Sex in the Monastery”. But is that still an Eco book? ”Yes”, he says. ”Whether it is still the same book in Japanese or Chinese... is a problem for the author. I can help with the problems, that is the most I can do not knowing the language in question. Italian is a small language, not like English, and the author must get involved with his translators and translations.” But ”it is not my job to tell people how to interpret my novels.”​

 

[Eric]

In #4, Mirabell mentions an interesting fact: Irving speaks enough German to presumably have a hands-on approach to any translation of his work into that language. This is a rare luxury for an English-speaking author. Most English-speaking authors are quite incapable of judging, while the other way round, a lot of non-English-speaking authors have enough English to interfere, cleverly or annoyingly, depending on their character.

Got to go, want to watch telly. Back later.

 

[Mirabell]

In #4, Mirabell mentions an interesting fact: Irving speaks enough German to presumably have a hands-on approach to any translation of his work into that language. This is a rare luxury for an English-speaking author. Most English-peaking authors are quite incapable of judging, while the other way round, a lot of non-English-speaking authors have enough English to interfere, cleverly or annoyingly, depending on their character.

Got to go, want to watch telly. Back later.

Yeah I heard Jelinek is an annoying meddler and Hulse told me that when he translated Lust (which is an astonishing feat) he avoided all contact to Jelinek and just did it without her. Germans (speakers of german) apparently have an annoying way of insisting they are right in discussions of English with a native speaker...

 

[Eric]

I would definitely avoid all contact with the lust-filled Jelinek. Creepy broad, man!

There are two types of non-English authors: a) those who use their English to help the translator to understand more exactly what s/he meant; b) those that want to prove to the world that their English is vastly more subtle than any native-speaker could possibly have a command of.

As a native-speaker of English, I will not insist on being right unless the author shows signs of being an arrogant bastard, who is using the little defenceless translator to prove to the world that his or her (i.e. the author's) English is fantastic. Then the cannon come out.

I have been incredibly lucky with with the authors I have translated. One was dead, the other dying, and the third - helpful. And only this third author had a good enough command of English to explain things. But without arrogance or condescension. That sort of author is ideal for the translator to communicate with.

If Germans are arrogant, so what? You have to stand up to arrogant people, whatever their nationality. Gradually, Mirabell's phoney biography of the half-Russian German living in Bonn is unravelling. I cannot imagine a German so lightly stabbing his compatriots in the back.

I think Eco is being disingenuous. What he is implying is that he hasn't a clue about the target language, but is feigning indifference as to the translation because it is beyond his reach - except for what the translator asks him. The statements of this James Bond semioticist don't entirely ring true.

 

[Mirabell]

If Germans are arrogant, so what? You have to stand up to arrogant people, whatever their nationality. Gradually, Mirabell's phoney biography of the half-Russian German living in Bonn is unravelling. I cannot imagine a German so lightly stabbing his compatriots in the back.

huh?
will you please stop this rigmarole? can't we just behave like more or less civilized human beings?

 

[Eric]

The point I am making is that the help that you, as a translator, get from the author can vary from case to case.

To return to titles, I must say that "Sex in the Monastery" is an interesting title for the Eco.

In my own case, as I have said elsewhere, I invented Treading Air, on the analogy of the expression "treading water" for the Kross book, and was pleased that the author himself accepted it. You feel safe when the author approves, then you don't feel you are doing him an injustice. As the literal title "Flying on the Spot" or "On the Spot Flight" sounded much more awkward in English than it did in Estonian.

The rhythm of the title can also be taken into account. When I did Treading Air as above, the rhythm is virtually the same as the Estonian original Paigallend. This title has three syllables and is, incidentally, made up of paik + l + lend, i.e. place + on + flight, as a compound word. Very succinct. Another reason for my solution.

When titles as a group form part of the image of the author, it is harder to change them. But not so many contemporary authors have the privilege of having several of their books appear in English translation.

If the title of a book involves a name, you have to decide whether the name means anything to the target audience, or indeed whether it can be pronounced by them. Take George Eliot's Felix Holt, Silas Marner, Daniel Deronda, Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss. Would there be any argument to change any of them, in a translation? The titles are names and therefore pretty opaque, before you've actually read the book.

And so on, and so forth. And that's just the title of the book, before you've even started at Page One!

 

[nnyhav]

Attempting the untranslatable: author or translator? Judith Sollosy in August Words Without Borders
Esterh?zy Per Se: A Translator?s Ball Game with a Postmodern Author

 

[Eric]

The Sollosy article is part of an important discussion: the translation of puns. But ultimately, an author is writing, in the first instance, for fellow native-speakers. Puns are a challenge to a translator. But once an author starts tailoring his work so that it can more easily be translated, he is beginning to reduce the full value of his work. If he goes too far, only an anodyne book will be the result.

The author can certainly cooperate with the translator, to get the maximum amount of punnery across to a foreign audience. But he mustn't make too many compromises.

 

[nnyhav]

I'm embarking on Arno Schmidt's short stories via John E. Woods, another such challenge.

Meanwhile, lifted from a Luc Sante interview:

Guernica: You suggest in the introduction to your translation of F?lix F?n?on?s Novels in Three Lines that translating F?n?on?s faits-divers?the brief news items he wrote for Le Matin in 1906?presents a special challenge. This is true partly, I take it, because of what you refer to as the "dynamism and tensile strength" F?n?on imparts to what would otherwise be a rhythmless reporting of facts. Which of the faits-divers included in the translation presented the greatest challenge in terms of conveying dynamism and tensility? What made the item?or items?so difficult to translate?

Luc Sante: It?s hard at this late date to reconstruct the specific process of translation, especially since I did it so fast. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, shifting clauses around for the smoothest fit, as well as of course finding equivalent words and phrases matching the original in meaning and color and pitch all at once. Languages never ever match point for point, and in the close confines of F?n?on?s items there was very little wiggle room. But still, F?n?on worked pretty well in English, I think. This is far from true for all writers; some writers pretty much elude translation because their thinking processes are so intimately linked to the French language?or the English or any other?that you can?t remove them from context without violence.