AtD translation: the title

[Mike Jing]

Oh, I certainly did. And it doesn't help that much, at least not directly,
since the grammatical structure is completely different. As I have just
explained, in many cases, a literal word for word translation is simply
impossible. But it never stopped people from making the same suggestion
over and over again. Please do not take this the wrong way, but if it is
indeed possible, I would have taken that route a long time ago. Because I
strongly prefer it myself, if it is at all possible. It might be hard to
imagine for some people, but Chinese is sufficiently different from English
such that sometimes it just doesn't work that way.



On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 9:53 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree with Jochen: simple is best, and probably of the most literal
> English word for word.  But maybe you should look to how the King James
> Bible has been translated by others of this phrase into Chinese.  That
> might really help.
>
> David
>
> On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 8:02 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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
>> >>
>> >
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>