AtD translation: the title

[Mike Jing]

You are right of course, and I'm certainly not a fan of this translation,
in fact not at all. However, the correspondence between words in English
and words in Chinese is not as simple a matter as one might imagine,
especially for prepositions. There is unfortunately no simple word for
"against" in Chinese. Even for nouns, there is often no simple one-to-one
correspondence, at least for nouns rich in connotations. For example, here
"白昼“ could mean either "daylight" or "daytime", and thus by extension,
"day", but certainly not as general by a long shot. This is one of the
reasons that a simple literal translation often does not work, simply
because such a translation does not exist. Even when it does exist, it
often makes awkward and non-idiomatic Chinese, which is not a good
translation at all. I myself suffer from this problem quite a bit, and have
to really try to gain a better appreciation of the richness and complexity
of the Chinese language in order to improve my translation. This point has
been raised a number of times before regarding text, and I have since
learned that, in many situations, there really is no such thing as a simple
literal translation.






On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 3:10 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Both words of what you refer to as prevailing Chinese translation seem
> unnecessary specific if you ask me. There must be Chinese word for
> "against" (which is much much more than resisting) and for "day" as well
> (which is much more than daylight!).
>
> As for the Monk quote, there's a nice discussion here:
> http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html
>
> J
>
> Am Fr., 4. Jan. 2019 um 06:58 Uhr schrieb David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> >:
>
>> 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
>> >
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>