IV translation: Pierre

Wed May 9 17:48:26 CDT 2012

Although I am with the obscure-state-capital-as-joke side--in fact, do we
annotate an absence?...I still did not know the capital of North Dakota
when I read Inherent Vice, having escaped those teachers Janos knew of,
it seems, and that seemed fitting when Doc purported not to know. 
(Although he probably did).

If we are annotating an absence then there is ole Herman's 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre:_or,_The_Ambiguities...
His anti-Gothic, containing a character of Hawthorne's, one 
edited version of which had illustrations by the barely- late Maurice
Sendak, which novel I tried to read on vacation the first year I was 
married, how stupid was I and no wonder I'm not married.  

From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 6:07 PM
Subject: Re: IV translation: Pierre

Ah, the translator's vice.

When I read a novel like Inherent Vice I assume that most of the text
is perfectly understandable to the average reader, the person who pays
for and reads the book.

A good translation should try to do this for readers of the translated
text. In other words, make the text perfectly understanddable to the
average person who will buy the book and read it.

Time is not your friend.

In 400 years or more, I assume, most english language readers will not
be able to make sense of a lot of Inherent Vice.

Now, if Pynchon is of interest in the future, and if scholars, as is
the case with Shakespeare and others, make fully annotated texts, I
suspect that some passages will deserve and require more annotation
than others. I suspect that some of the footnotes in these future
texts will deal with specific words that have shifted in meaning, in
usage and so on. I also assume that a full comprehension of the text
will be impossible.

So, translators who spend too much time discovering what full
comprehension is to native readers will lose meanings as time passes.

A film, and a  wonderful novel, by Coover.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Lucky_Pierre

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Max Nemtsov <max.nemtsov at gmail.com> wrote:
> yes, that's what i meant in the previous missive, more or less
> the idea is to lose as little as we possibly can while translating such
> polyphonic and multilayered texts. sometimes it's a real triumph when we
> find out that we can convey 9-10 out of those 17 meanings into another
> language (not a bad result, actually). 2 out of 3 would be excellent )) it
> is only rare when we have 100 % hits, alas
> i mean difficult cases, of course
> Mx
>
>
> On 09.05.2012 23:21, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>
>> On 5/9/2012 2:50 PM, Bled Welder wrote:
>>>
>>> You see, how do you know if he intended what, anyway.
>>>
>>> Or I think a big one is, what if the writer conceives something, jots it
>>> down, then five minutes later realizes it means multiple other things
>>> than what he first thought. Does that count?
>>>
>>> Just because we can all agree that there is at least seventeen levels of
>>> pun going on in one single crack, does it mean that all seventeen were
>>> intended, or even thought of?
>>
>>
>> Sometimes, when reading an English translation of a novel, you come across
>> what seems like it should be an important sentence--but the sentence falls
>> completely flat, doesn't resonate, doesn't have any overtones. You realize,
>> of course, that you are missing a lot of what the original author wrote,
>> possibly a pun, conscious or unconscious, humorous or not necessarily so,
>> but important, and alas irretrievable. This kind of loss may not be the
>> fault of the translator, often is not.  It's just the way language works.
>>
>> Dang.
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>>
>>> > Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 14:32:12 -0400
>>> > Subject: Re: IV translation: Pierre
>>> > From: richard.romeo at gmail.com
>>> > To: max.nemtsov at gmail.com
>>> > CC: mackin.paul at verizon.net; pynchon-l at waste.org
>>> >
>>> > could be simply doc doesnt know what the capital of south dakota is.
>>> > let s not over analyze everything
>>> >
>>> > On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Max Nemtsov <max.nemtsov at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > > hm, interesting results
>>> > > http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/33/messages/458.html
>>> > > thanks a load, Paul
>>> > > Mx
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > > On 09.05.2012 22:07, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>> > >>
>>> > >> On 5/9/2012 12:53 PM, Max Nemtsov wrote:
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> p. 39
>>> > >>> "Ask you something, Doc?"
>>> > >>> "Long as it ain't the capital of South Dakota, sure."
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> colleagues, are there any special jokes re Pierre I'm not aware of,
>>> > >>> apart from different pronunciations of the name or the fact that
>>> > >>> it's
>>> > >>> too difficult to name, being obscure in California or something?
>>> > >>> again, your suggestions will be much appreciated
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>
>>> > >> You might want to google "lucky pierre."
>>> > >>
>>> > >> it has a sexual meaning, which I forget at the moment.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> P
>>> > >>
>>> > >
>>
>>
>
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