IV translation: Pierre

Thu May 10 01:26:49 CDT 2012

On Translating

I'm just looking through the German translation of a novel of Ross
Thomas, The Backup Men, from around 1971. One paragraph:

"Nonsense," she said, rising and moving over to one of the filing
cabinets. "There was a time when we would have had champagne, but —"
She let her sentence trail off as she brought out a bottle of sherry,
placed it on the desk, returned to the file cabinet and produced four
long-stemmed wine-glasses which she polished with a clean white cloth.

German translation (1972):

»Unsinn!« schnitt sie ihm das Wort ab und trat an einen Wandschrank.
»Früher hatten wir hier stets Champagner, aber heutzutage . ..« Sie
stellte eine Flasche auf den Tisch, zog vier Gläser aus dem Schrank
und polierte sie mit einem weißen Tuch.

German translation (2012):

»Unsinn!« sagte sie, stand auf und ging zu einem Aktenschrank. »Es gab
eine Zeit, da hätten wir Champagner getrunken, aber —« Sie ließ ihren
Satz ausklingen, als sie eine Flasche Sherry hervorholte, stellte sie
auf den Schreibtisch, ging zurück zu dem Aktenschrank und brachte vier
langstielige Gläser zum Vorschein, die sie mit einem sauberen weißen
Tuch polierte.

An Australian friend, professor of German literature, wrote in an
email some weeks ago:

Did I ever tell you that the English version of "Der Tod in Venedig", which
made it a classic, is a good third shorter than the original? Every time
Ms Lowe Porter hit something she found puzzling, she just left it out.

And then there is the German translation of Richard Price's Lush Life,
Cash, with highlights as this:

LL, 406: Daley mimed shooting up.
CASH, 466: Daley ahmte eine Rakete nach.

Yes, it is a wide field ...

J

2012/5/10 Max Nemtsov <max.nemtsov at gmail.com>:
> 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> 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
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>