AtD translation: the title

[Mike Jing]

That's what I first saw on Wikipedia of course, and I've been thinking
along this line for quite a while. I guess I'll have to think about it some
more. Thanks, David.


On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 12:54 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would start with the earliest and most known uses of the phrase in
> English: King James Bible:  There it is about storing up power to resist
> defeat in a future battle.  "That day" is a time of war in that context.
> War against evil.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 11:27 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm still busy with other things, but I thought it would be a good idea to
>> think about how to translate the title, which I find rather difficult. The
>> prevailing Chinese translation I can find is "抵抗白昼", or roughly "Resisting
>> Daylight", and I'm not sure it's correct. Here's a passage from an article
>> in Chinese written about the book shortly after it was published, which I
>> have translated into English below:
>>
>> 'For Pynchon, the world of daylight is reality, tyranny, a waking
>> nightmare, it's what the characters in the book are striving to run away
>> from. At the beginning of the book, Pynchon quotes black American jazz
>> musician Thelonious Monk: "it's always dark, in other words, we don't need
>> light." Light signifies daylight, and the book title suggests that the
>> characters are resisting daylight, seeking the refuge of the night,
>> looking
>> for transcendence in the fourth dimension, hoping to escape the shackles
>> of
>> reality and live according to their own free will.'
>>
>> The problem here is that the quote from Monk was completely butchered. In
>> the original quote, the word "or" means "otherwise", not "in other words".
>> I consider this a major mistake, and it weakens the author's argument
>> considerably. Of course, the rest of what she said here may still be true,
>> but the quote certainly does not help make the case.
>>
>> Any thoughts and ideas will be greatly appreciated.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>