Translation Madness

[Mirabell]

I have been wondering whether Wilhelm Raabe's deeply flawed but fascinating novel "Der HUngerpastor" was translated into English. Apparently it was, and it's listed at amazon.com. In the product description Amazon.com: The Hunger Pastor (German Classics): Wilhelm Raabe, Ewald Eiserhardt, Muriel Almon: Books

there's this very very very strange comment

--- Raabe's rambling style makes his works difficult reading for many contemporary readers. In this version of The Hunger Pastor, several chapters have therefore been summarized by the translator, while the most important ones are published in their original length.

SOME have been summarized whereas THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES are published in full length?

[Eric]

Some of us, apart from Mirabell, do read German. The question is whether we have the stamina to read works that no one has promoted or introduced. The Raabe works have been published, in full as I can see, here:

Projekt Gutenberg-DE - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Kultur

The big problem is here that many contributors to the WLF cannot read German. How many English translations of this author does Mirabell know of, so we can all join in? If English-speakers continue to regard Raabe as rambling, there won't be many translations into English.

The Projekt-Gutenberg is rather good, really. It shows that Raabe wrote rather a lot. Maybe Mirabell can introduce this author, in the way I've introduced countless authors from my various fields. Raabe may have written more than "deeply flawed" novels.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Eric

Some of us, apart from Mirabell, do read German. The question is whether we have the stamina to read works that no one has promoted or introduced. The Raabe works have been published, in full as I can see, here:

Projekt Gutenberg-DE - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Kultur

The big problem is here that many contributors to the WLF cannot read German. How many English translations of this author does Mirabell know of, so we can all join in? If English-speakers continue to regard Raabe as rambling, there won't be many translations into English.

The Projekt-Gutenberg is rather good, really. It shows that Raabe wrote rather a lot. Maybe Mirabell can introduce this author, in the way I've introduced countless authors from my various fields. Raabe may have written more than "deeply flawed" novels.

So you decided to reply to this thread but not touch upon my complaint AT ALL? Someone should hug you, I think.

To return to the topic of this thread: I find it rather puzzling that the publisher expects this to be a feasible method to treat the book. They must expect to sell more books in this manner than by completely translating the novel, which means that there must be enough people who would pay money for this. This puzzles me.

Would you? I'm already put off by the two missing chapters in the wind-up chronicle. am I weird for being so irritated by this?

[Colette Jones]

I agree with you Mirabell. I would not knowingly buy a book that had had the treatment described, but I might not know about it.

Why are there two missing chapters in the wind-up chronicle?

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

SOME have been summarized whereas THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES are published in full length?

They did this to my copy of Sienkiewicz' Quo Vadis too. The translator claims to have gotten rid of a bunch of "unnecessary" descriptions and background "to make the book better and more accessible to modern readers". What a pity the translator didn't get to meet Sienkiewicz in person and help him make his books better - if he had, maybe Sienkiewicz' books would have been good enough to win two Nobel prizes.

[Eric]

I'm now beginning to understand what Mirabell's original complaint is. Summarising some chapters instead of translating them. Mirabell, you have to hug me, but I just didn't see what you were driving at before, because your question was in a quote.

Obviously, it seems suspect that the translator play pick 'n mix with the chapters. If a book is boring in parts, but otherwise worth publishing, it can be skilfully abridged (i.e. the boring bits are cut out).

I can find webpages where the novel, most recently published in English in 1992, was "abridged for today's reader" by the translator. But how old that translation is, I'm not sure.

I was translating something literally yesterday on the topic of abridgement. Mika Waltari said to Thomas Warburton (whose book of translation memoirs I'm translating) that Waltari recognised that he wrote too expansively and was grateful for editors' and translators' suggestions where to cut things out. But Warburton, who worked as a translator and a publisher, emphasises that this must always be done with the author's consent.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Eric

Maybe Mirabell can introduce this author, in the way I've introduced countless authors from my various fields. Raabe may have written more than "deeply flawed" novels.

wrote a quick one tonight. Wilhelm Raabe: The Hunger Pastor

[Eric]

Not much translation madness on this thread these past few days.

[hdw]

Talking of translation madness, I've just finished reading your translation of Jaan Kross's "Treading Air", and you must have been mad to take on such a daunting task, but the result is a tour de force, so congratulations! With your informative introductory essay and the potted biographies of politicians and cultural leaders at the end, the book is an indispensable guide to modern Estonia, a faraway country of which we Brits know little, except for those who indulge in let's-get-legless-and-let-it-all-hang-out hen and stag outings to Tallinn. And all they know is the Irish theme pubs.

I have to confess I didn't buy it, I came across it during a public library browse, so you won't be getting royalties, though maybe you'll get a few coppers from the ALCS. I enjoy getting their little cheques from time to time as they make feel like a real writer, but when it's for photocopying I wish they would specify what exactly has been photocopied out of my various literary effusions.

I've got a new interest, which is the Danish writer Anders Bodelsen's short-story collection "Drivhuset" (The Greenhouse), and I feel a bout of translation madness coming on which tells me it might be fun to try translating the first story, just to see how it goes. If I'm satisfied with the finished product I might post it on the Nordic Voices in Translation site. As far as I know nobody has rendered these stories into English yet, and if I start working on them then find that I'm wrong about that, I will be fit to be tied.

Harry

[Eric]

Harry says:

Estonia, a faraway country of which we Brits know little, except for those who indulge in let's-get-legless-and-let-it-all-hang-out hen and stag outings to Tallinn.

If you want to read the definitive website on this sort of "cultural" activity, please look at:

Latest Press Coverage of Tallinn PissUp

Never let it be said that I don't promote Estonia, but this really is the pits. Tallinn PissUp will turn your stag night into a shag night. Though there is a phenomenon called brewer's droop. PissUp revels in its notoriety.

While I'm translating stories for Brits, they've all buggered off to Tallinn to get pissed out of their minds. Hope there are still a few genteel types left in Blighty to read my translations.

*

As for "Treading Air", I enjoyed translating the book and, indeed, writing the introduction, and the list of names at the end. You learn a lot by translating. One appendix they regretfully left out was a list of foreign expressions in French, Russian, Italian ("furfante!"), German, and so on. But otherwise, I'm satisfied with what Harvill did with the book.

Three unsung heroines helped me with the translation: native-speakers of Estonian Tiina Randviir of the Estonian Institute, and Kati Lindholm of Tartu University (who now has a PhD in Japanese!), who helped me avoid foolish misapprehensions; plus the Harvill editor Marcella Edwards, who went meticulously through the translation on the English side of things, picking up clumsy expressions. Although the translator is obviously responsible for the final result, this kind of teamwork is very useful.

Regarding the introduction, I felt it was essential to have one, as so few British readers have any in-depth knowledge of that tiny country. This is a novel where you can't simply follow the old idea of "a novel must stand up on its own". You miss a lot of subtle digs and irony, if you don't know something about the geography, the history, the politics, etc.

You don't know whether to laugh or cry when you read, for instance, about a left-wing gynæcologist who had a penchant for French modernist poetry, and was a poet in his own right, then became a puppet prime-minister of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, and ended up committing suicide, maybe with a little help from the Russian secret police. This was Johannes Vares (1890-1946), who used the pen name "Barbarus" and has a bit-part in the novel.

[Nostromo]

Originally Posted by Eric

Not much translation madness on this thread these past few days.

I am currently reading the english translation of Raabe's Der Hungerpastor published by Mondial. Even at 141 pages I find it a bit of a chore, but that is not my criticism here. The blurb on the back says "In this version of The Hunger Pastor, several chapters have therefore been summarized by the translator; while the most important ones are published in their original length."

Well given the book consists of 36 chapters and a massive 24 chapters are condensed down to 30 pages (including the whole of chapters 24-33), I would say that "several chapters" is a bit of an understatement by Mondial.

Maybe a partial translation is better than none at all, but this does seem to be a very drastic digest.

[Eric]

Nostromo (or should that be Nostradamus) does indeed point out an odd amount of abridgement. If I've understood correctly, two thirds of the novel is skipped over in 30 pages to join the thing up. You're not supposed to do that. And the website mutters something about anti-Semitism:

Despite some anti-Semitic elements, which were commonly found in the works of some 19th century bourgeois writers in Germany, The Hunger Pastor is and remains a German literature classic.

Oh, that's alright then. All the bourgeoisie did it, so never mind, eh.

I get the feeling that Mondial is one of those multiple minorities set-ups, where the editors try to squeeze their books into a number of boxes. Publishing both Marx' book about the Paris Commune and Céline's "Voyage to the End of Night" - both in Esperanto - does rather bias me, I'm afraid. Plus Mann and Strindberg. All culturally worthwhile, I suppose, but who reads Esperanto, nowadays?

When I was a teenager, Esperanto fascinated me. But when I realised that hardly anyone used it, I also realised it had become an exclusive club of adepts, instead of the language you could use at every railway station and in every hotel, as was the original, idealistic idea. So I learnt real languages instead. Real languages have a cultural and historical hinterland, which Esperanto lacks. Zamenhof's project was a great idea; but it has, in my opinion, failed.

[Mirabell]

Another incomprehensible piece of translation strangeness.

The last book of fiction by the inestimable Ms. Atwood is called "Moral Disturbance and other stories", and contains a collection of interconnected short stories.

here's the cover



Now. the german translation is called a novel
here's the cover

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...0L._SS500_.jpg


why?

Why? why? why? I do realize that the stories function like chapters from a novel. but it is not a novel. why did the translaor (or probably the publisher) call it one?

does this sort of thing often happen? or is it just this sucky country's sucky translation ethic that allows for this?

[Eric]

The distinction between a novel and a series of interconnected stories is not always so cut and dried. At present, as you can see from the insert, I'm reading a Norwegian book that can be read either as a novel or as a series of stories. Max Sebald claimed his postmodernist excursions were not novels. But in the end, the publisher and bookseller has to make some commercial, rather than æsthetic, choices.

If one lives in what one thinks of as a "sucky" country, one should move to another. Just because Berlin Verlag does not meet with your approval does not mean that you should dismiss the whole of Germany as a hotbed of idiots and philistines. Perhaps Bonn is too much of a backwater. Though I understand that people at Suhrkamp, which is threatening to move to Berlin, regard the German capital as too provincial as well, compared with Buchmesse-Stadt Frankfurt.