Invested in reading / invested by the difficulties

[Mike Jing]

The unfortunate fact is that, in translating from English to Chinese, much
of the nuances and connotations in the original text will be lost. And this
is doubly true for Pynchon. Therefore, some have argued that Pynchon is
untranslatable, and they do have a point. I was told this when I was still
working on translating GR. My response at the time was that my bar was
considerably lower. Instead of trying to achieve the perfect translation
that would please everybody, all I was trying to do is to do better than
the published Chinese translation, which I consider to be an abomination
due to its many obvious mistakes.

Last year, after 12 years since the original publication of the Chinese
translation of GR, they published a 2nd edition, revised by the author,
aided by a dozen or so "experts". Unsurprisingly, many of those mistakes
still remain.  For example:

V179   You will have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.

is rendered as "You (plural) will have the tallest, darkest leader in
Hollywood."

V135.39   . . . tippin’ those Toledos at 7 pounds 8 ounces . . .

". . . gently brandishing the Toledo blade while weighing only 7 pounds 8
ounces . . ."

V683.16 Ass usually is backwards, right?

"Donkeys usually walk backwards, right?"

So on and so forth. It's probably a good thing that most of the P-list will
not read this version, or the one before it.

The point is that both my ability and my goal are rather modest. And when I
ask a question, it's because I genuinely do not understand the text on a
very basic level, thus making translation literally impossible. All the
extra reading is fine and dandy, but sadly it's probably mostly irrelevant
to the translation in the end.


On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 2:15 AM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
wrote:

> ...good writing contains many times more meanings than a narrow reading
> gleans, so you have the Scylla of missing nuances, connotations
>
> But there’s also the Charybdis of reading incompatible, extraneous, or
> simply wrong extensions into something
>
> (Charybdis especially was the whirlpool one, so that relates to getting
> sucked into troubled waters)
>
> Just translating into different English - paraphrasing for my own
> understanding & appreciation - involves ruling stuff out, visualizing,
> trying to apprehend a context & look for links, salient (also a military
> term) points -
>
> Coming to a provisional understanding of a passage that you know a lot of
> work went into: background work, the stocking and stoking of the word hoard
> and vision; and the word choice, sequence & revisions - so that of a
> plethora of meanings & connotations that you *know* the author is aware of,
> this particular author uses multiple ones, maybe even all of them.
>
> Stuff that anyone would notice, and maybe some things nobody else would
> notice (and the possibility that they aren’t intended) - like, does this
> passage’s reference to siegecraft
>
>
>   *    which already has a nice two-edged nature, viz. the Candlebrow
> scholars are laying siege to the intellectual and engineering problems
> posed by Time, and
>   *    Time is also laying siege to them, their heirs and assigns, their
> projects, etc
>   *   And possibly a 3rd (using the more pedestrian meaning of “invested
> by” in the asset management sense): that Time is utilizing them for its own
> purposes
>   *   Or that some Power beyond time and humanity is utilizing both of
> them for an even more complex project?
>
> bear any narratively significant relation to another point made to the
> Chums by Gaspereaux?
>
> He said,
> “Among historians you’ll find a theory that crusades begin as holy
> pilgrimages....But introduce to your sacred project the element of weaponry
> and everything changes. Now you need not only a destination but an enemy as
> well.”
>
> For me, the extraneous considerations of the other seekers are those of
> crusaders, whereas Merle and his fellow tinkers are pilgrims to the extent
> that their purely technical interests don’t - at least at the outset -
> revolve around changing other people’s lives.
>
> The paraprosdokian - or, “paraprosdokian-plus” is that the surprise
> intensification effect of “invested in, invested by” isn’t limited to a
> reversal, but opens out into multiple possibilities
>
> And the ways in the book in which the spirit of pure inquiry exemplified
> in Merle is co-opted into projects  with horrific results like the Vormance
> Expedition, or Kit’s fascination with flight into dive bombing...
>
> And the “flattening out” of the idea of manipulating Time itself into the
> achievable simulacra of film, radio, tv, recordings, which (as rereaders)
> we know will draw  Merle into its ambit.
>
> & in fact the graphite connotations of the “anharmonic pencils” that come
> into the tale hereabouts allude to yet another form of representation,
> “time-binding” (imho)(besides probably having a more mathematical set of
> connotations as well)
>
> The attempts to revisit past times partially fulfilled; the desire to
> revise them still “under attack” (with perhaps a suggestion that a more
> peaceful, pilgrim-like approach is what’s needed)
>
> All of which and more is implied in the passage, imho, with laudable
> panache.
>
>
> So great respect for trying in a different language.
>
> Thanks and kudos for sharing OED meaning #5!
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>