IV translation: Pierre

Wed May 9 21:29:23 CDT 2012

in the text, we don't explain anything. of course. in commentaries, we 
might. this is what, i believe, Charles Hollander, called misdirection, 
and it has other scientific names, too, when the punchline or a keyword 
is indeed absent

just of give another example from IV i encountered just yesterday (i 
don't know if it's been discussed here):

p. 40
According to Sortilege, these were perilous times, astrologically 
speaking, for dopers - especially those of high-school age, who'd been 
born, most of them, under a ninety-degree aspect, the unluckiest angle 
possible, between Neptune, the dopers planet, and Uranus, the planet of 
rude surprises.

apart from purely astrological meanings i haven't verified yet, there is 
one more or less obvious one, why this angle is unlucky for dopers. in 
astrology this position is called, well, a square, and this is the key 
word conspicuously absent here. while in translating we can normally do 
a lot of permissible things to the original text, to insert this very 
word here will be not. u.s.w.
Mx

On 10.05.2012 2:48, Mark Kohut wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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 <mailto:richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> >>> > To: max.nemtsov at gmail.com <mailto:max.nemtsov at gmail.com>
> >>> > CC: mackin.paul at verizon.net <mailto:mackin.paul at verizon.net>; 
> pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto: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 <mailto: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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