GR translation: patches will flash up now and then

[Dave Monroe]

The Task of the Translator

"... any translation that intends to perform a transmitting function
cannot transmit anything but communica- tion-hence, something
inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not
generally regard that which lies beyond communication in a literary
work-and even a poor translator will admit that this is its essential
substance-as the unfathomable, the mysterious, the 'poetic'? And is
this not something that a translator can reproduce only if he is
also--a poet? Such, actually, is the cause of another characteristic
of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the
inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. Whenever a
translation undertakes to serve the reader, it demonstrates this.
However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to
apply to the original. If the original does not exist for the reader's
sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this
premise?
   "Translation is a form. To comprehend it as a form, one must go
back to the original, for the laws governing the translation lie
within the original, contained in the issue of its
translatability...."

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/deconstructionandnewmediatheory/walterbenjamintasktranslator.pdf

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 9:01 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, but that threshold is too high for normal world translators. Real
> translation of poetry is impossible. The reader must become the learned
> translator, eventually.
>
> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> ... too many resonances to catch to translate "literally" (see, e.g.,
>> my earlier notes on hysteron proteron in GR).  You're not just
>> translating words, you're translating relationships ...
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 8:33 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I think Mike's translation challenge with Pynchon is in NOT interpreting
>> > the
>> > text. Be literal, because poetry should be translated prior to
>> > interpretation.
>> >
>> > David Morris
>> >
>> > On Saturday, September 5, 2015, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Getting specific, patches flashing up on the visible mountainsides
>> >> resembles a divisional patch.  That association is the point. But it
>> >> shouldn't be explicit in translation. Indeed it can't be translated.
>> >>
>> >> David Morris
>> >>
>> >> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> This passage is trying to relate a drug induced experience, and thus
>> >>> is
>> >>> impossible to translate into a normal experience, except by extreme
>> >>> analogies, which is what Pynchon so often does. So throw out normal
>> >>> analogies.
>> >>>
>> >>> In extreme drug-induced experience, "patches" of perception will flash
>> >>> brightly. Messages from the paranoid beyond, which might, or might
>> >>> not, be
>> >>> crucial to survival. And which you might forget having received in the
>> >>> next
>> >>> second.
>> >>>
>> >>> David Morris
>> >>>
>> >>> On Saturday, September 5, 2015, Mike Jing
>> >>> <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>> >>> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> V640.30-641.2   On the mountainsides, patches will flash up now and
>> >>>> then, bright as dittany in July at the Zippo’s ceremonial touch. Pfc.
>> >>>> Eddie
>> >>>> Pensiero, a replacement here in the 89th Division, also an
>> >>>> amphetamine
>> >>>> enthusiast, sits huddling nearly on top of the fire, shivering and
>> >>>> watching
>> >>>> the divisional patch on his arm, which ordinarily resembles a cluster
>> >>>> of
>> >>>> rocketnoses seen out of a dilating asshole, all in black and
>> >>>> olive-drab, but
>> >>>> which now looks like something even stranger than that, which Eddie
>> >>>> will
>> >>>> think of in a minute.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Are these patches of vegetation, or something else entirely?
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l