GR translation: patches will flash up now and then

[Dave Monroe]

Des tours de Babel

"What the multiplicity of idioms comes to limit is not only a 'true'
translation, a transparent and adequate interexpression, it is also a
structural order, a coherence of construct...."

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

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 9:08 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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