What are you reading

[bekah]

But without translators I would never be able to read Pamuk who 
writes in Turkish or Imre Kertész or Saramago or  many others.   I 
love international fiction but I'm no linguist so  I would not even 
be able to read Marquez Garcia without translation.    I would not 
know Tolstoy or Mahfouz or Camus or Pasternak or Hesse or Grass or 
Mann or Undset or dozens of other internationally acclaimed authors. 
Yes,  much of the style is lost,  but, if the translator is worth his 
stuff,   the ideas remain and one of the most important reasons I 
read is for ideas - with me it's probably more important than style 
or plot or other elements of literature.   What good is a stylist 
without ideas?

There are special awards for translators now,  and John Carey (my 
hero) gave a wonderful speech at the last Mann Booker International 
award ceremony in which he gave praise to  translators. 
<http://www.canongate.net/News/John-Careys-Presentation-Speech>


This brings me to the subject of translators. We should like, as 
judges, to pay tribute to translators, without whose labours the 
International Prize could not have happened. Translators, it seems to 
us, bring nations and races together far more effectively than 
statesmen or politicians, who often do the opposite. Translators are 
heroes, working against impossible odds. For in truth there is no 
such thing as an accurate translation - no such thing as a linguistic 
equivalent in one language for a word in another. Languages are 
closed systems, separate planets with their own atmospheres of 
thought and feeling. Even loan words from another language become 
something different when they are transplanted into their new 
climate. Brain scientists now tell us that the language we use 
modifies our neural pathways, so that an English speaker's brain 
organisation, for example, is different from that of someone who 
speaks, say, Italian or Japanese. So translators are trying to join 
up differently organised brains. Of course, translators must strive 
to hide these problems. They are benign deceivers. They must make us 
feel that what we are reading is not a translation at all, but the 
author's work. The judges are delighted that the rules of the Man 
Booker International Prize have now been modified to include a 
special award for the winning author's translator.

It is a sign of the disrespect in which translators have customarily 
been held, and a sign too of the parochialism of the British literary 
scene, that foreign literature in translation is so neglected. As 
Alberto Manguel pointed out in an article in the Spectator, if you 
speak Spanish or French or Italian or German, or any of a dozen other 
languages, and walk into your local bookstore, you will find 
translations of a fair sampling of most of the important books 
written around the world. You will find what is being imagined in 
China, what stories are being told in Korea, how the novel is being 
reinvented in Spain and the Scandinavian countries. But if you live 
in England you will find no such abundance. When we checked through 
our original list of 120 contestants, we found that we had to 
disqualify writer after writer, not on grounds of quality or stature, 
but because they were not generally available in English translation. 
Frequently they had been translated back in the 80s or 90s, but the 
publisher had allowed the translations to go out of print. So we were 
unable to consider, for example, Peter Handke or Michel Tournier or 
Christoph Ransmayr or Antonio Lobo Antunes or Rachid Boudjedra or 
Fernando Vallejo - and so on. No doubt publishers have difficulties 
of their own to struggle with. But to an outsider the British 
publishing industry can seem like a conspiracy intent on depriving 
English-speaking readers of the majority of the good books written in 
languages other than their own. Alberto Manguel is surely right to 
point out that the same laxity, fifty or sixty years ago, would have 
meant, for the English reader, no Kafka, no Camus, no Calvino, no 
Borges. The judges hope that the advent of the Man Booker 
International Prize will encourage British publishers to reverse this 
trend. No other single outcome could, in our view, matter more.

Bekah
Blessed are the translators for they shall know style.

At 4:59 PM +0300 10/14/06, Ya Sam wrote:
>That is why I prefer to read in the original and will keep trying to 
>get the reading knowledge of as many languages as possible. A bad 
>translator can butcher the text and disfigure it beyond recognition. 
>LD is a very dense text, rich in vocabulary and cerainly requires an 
>expert translator. There is a good article on translation by Norfolk 
>himself in which he says the following:
>
>"A writer-in-translation is as isolated as a general in his bunker 
>trying simultaneously to direct a war on twenty or more fronts. The 
>dispatches come through (or fail to) but, reduced as they are to 
>their bare essentials, it is hard to know how the conflict as a 
>whole is going."
>
>http://www.barcelonareview.com/20/e_ln.htm
>
>
>
>>From: Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com>
>>To: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>>CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>Subject: Re: What are you reading
>>Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:34:27 +0200
>>
>>Critical review about the flawed (?) German translation of Norfolk's book:
>>
>>Stetige Bumser im Rücken
>>Die Qualität einer Übersetzung läßt sich durchaus beurteilen
>>Von Dieter E. Zimmer (Nabokov specialist)
>>DIE ZEIT/Feuilleton,
>>Nr.6, 5.Februar 1993, S.56
>>http://tinyurl.com/ynaywt
>>
>>Eleven literary translators had written an open letter to the
>>publisher. Their demand was to the destroy the books and that there
>>should be a new translation. The publisher answered by threatening to
>>sue them.
>>
>>"At the mention of pork the place erupts."
>>"Bei der Nennung des Schweins explodiert der Platz."
>>
>>-- but you simply cannot say that in German, and "center of gravity"
>>isn't "Mittelpunkt des Schwergewichtes".
>>
>>Nevertheless, there's a 60-pages "Journal of the Translator" at the
>>end of the book which is quite helpful for the historical background
>>of the novel.
>>
>>Otto
>>
>>2006/10/10, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>:
>>>  >"Barbarus hic ego sum
>>>>
>>>
>>>Exactly what I feel while reading this book. Norfolk did his homework well.
>>>Very informative as well, i.e. I didn't know that the Romans had the goddess
>>>of sewers.
>>>
>>
>
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