Translation II

[jbor]

Or, there's the option of a textual companion, something like the 
Weisenberger or Fowler guides to GR, or Moore's invaluable Reader's Guide to
Gaddis's *The Recognitions*, or the way some editions of Chaucer's tales and
Shakespeare's plays are set out. Cumbersome but effective. But the larger
problem is always that any act of reading is, or contains, an act of
translation, or interpretation. Inescapably. So *GR* in Polish is not only
going to be by Thomas Pynchon, but by Jedrzej Polak and Thomas Pynchon.
Indeed, *GR* in English is not only by Thomas Pynchon but by Thomas Pynchon
and the current reader.

A majority of readers whose first language is English are unlikely to get
all the references -- whether cultural, historical, linguistic -- in
Pynchon's text, so that shouldn't really be a huge drama either. The texts
themselves are incredibly multilingual already, so readers constantly need
to be diving off to reference texts to translate a line of pseudo-Borges, or
identify potential errors in German vocabulary and grammar. But jokes and
slang don't translate well at all, nor do puns and proverbs: in fact,
metaphoric idioms constantly befuddle second language learners and, as we
all know, all language is metaphor ("a thrust at truth and a lie": *Lot49*
p.89). Pynchon plays around with this overtly in *V.*, too, in that sequence
when Benny, Geronimo and Angel are out "prowling for coño", and Profane
fantasises of Lucille, one of the pieces of "jailbait" they have just met,
how he would "show her his name was Sfacim after all."(138-142)

Further, cultural literacy is quite a separate issue. The trouble with the
third option you propose is that the references are already
culture-specific. It's important as a facet of Oedipa's characterisation to
know that a Tupperware Party is (was?) where a group of middle class
Anglo-Western women with too much time on their hands gather together at one
of their homes on a rotating and semi-regular basis, ostensibly in order to
purchase over-priced plastic containers and sup on pretentious morning or
afternoon fare (Pynchon doesn't feel the need to translate "kirsch" or
"fondue" even though many readers might not quite understand these
references), but really also to indulge in a spot of oneupping and gossip
and self-validation of the bourgeois ethos they each aspire to. It's not
going to work with paella and a lace-weaving circle, because he's
specifically invoking an aspect of 60s Americana: it's
Kinneret-Among-the-Pines, not Castellón de la Plana.

So I agree with you that the whole process of translation is fraught, but I
guess it's the imperfection of language wherein much of its beauty lies ...


best


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>From: Jedrzej Polak <jedpolak at mac.com>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Translation II
>Date: Mon, May 29, 2000, 6:14 PM
>

> That's the question I often ask myself. There are three choices: you leave
> them as they are, and take for granted that the majority of readers are
> aware of the cultural background (which unfortunately is not true); you make
> footnotes and render the text unreadable; you try to be creative, and find
> cultural equivalents in the vicinity (that's my approach).
snip