AtD translation: too fair to be alone, too crazy for town/exploding into the dark

[Mike Jing]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 4:05 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Got it.  Sort of.  But, Pynchon wouldn’t want you translating words that
> he intended to be simple (as isolated words) but are connected to other
> words in strange ways like “too fair to be alone, too crazy for town.”
>

I’m not sure I understand what you are trying to tell me here. My guess is
that you are trying to explain to me why these simple words should be
translated “as written”. The problem is that “simple” words are not simple
at all. As you probably know, there is no unique one-to-one correspondence
between English and Chinese words. If there were, there would be no need
for a human translator. In reality, simply matching words does not work at
all, since the differences between English and Chinese are simply too
great. It makes extremely poor translation, and the result of such practice
is deservedly looked down upon by Chinese readers.

I think people who are giving me such advice are thinking about translation
between closely related languages, e.g. between English and French (even
then, exceptions must often be made), while translation between English and
Chinese is a whole different matter. Modern Chinese has been influenced by
western languages, especially English, over the years, but there remain
significant differences that in most cases “literal translation” gives
completely unacceptable results. As a matter of fact, my style may be too
literal for some readers, since there are comments saying that my
translation of Solaris resembles computer translation. I didn’t think my
Chinese was that bad, but who knows.

I hope this helps people understand why I ask these questions and why they
are necessary. Without a deep understanding of the text, a proper
translation is simply impossible.