h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I read the English version of 'Name of the Rose' and 'Focault's Pendulum' some time ago, and loved both, even though the subtext to both is pretty much "I'm really, really clever. Much cleverer than you!" Neither read like they were translations.

On the other hand, I read 'War and Peace' translated into the English, and that did read like a translation, but that's a good thing sometimes. Adds to the atmosphere, I think.

As my foreign language skills start and stop pretty much with Jean-Paul est dans le jardin, I can't comment on how books read in the original and in translation.

What I have done is read two different translations of some Zola's work. They read very differently indeed. Much due I believe to the way that the use of English had changed between the times when the translations were carried out.

Apparently this sort of difference occurs with Proust translations, not that I've ever attempted to read him - how many thousands of pages inspired by the taste of a small cake?

oh that's an interesting aspect I'd never thought of!

I know there are several translations of Beowulf, and the one I have insn't the one which is considered to be the best. I really want to get the other (Seamus Heaney I think?) and compare them.

Proust... my lifetime won't be long enough for me to pick any of that up as reading matter.

Otto, was your W&P translation by Constace Garnett? I didn't read W&P (after hearing Woody Allen's summary I don't need to) I have read one of her other Tolstoy translations and it wasn't too bad.

I have a tranlated version of 'The Portable Nietzsche' which says in the introduction that previous English translations of Nietzsche were totally unacceptable.

Lots of examples are given in this introduction as to how and why previous translations failed, which makes for quite an interesting read in itself.

It also might explain why I have never really liked Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabelle Allende - as I have only ever read them translated into English. I've always wondered if it was just bad translations because I've enjoyed the stories, just not the writing style.

az

Keith Ansell Pearson, one of the lecturers on my MA course made much the same point about translations of Nietzsche. I think he recommended the Walter kaufmann translation of "The Gay Science," though I did pick up the edition KAP edited (translated by Carol Diethe) of "On The Genealogy of Morality." not least because it had relevant extracts from "Human, All Too Human" included in the appendices.

"Q" by the the gestalt entity Luther Blisset (not the footballer) was translated from the Italian and wanders between crass explitives some quite interesting prose and other parts, mostly dialogue which are difficult to read and I suspect suffered in the translation.

<>

Well, it's the Walter Kaufmann translation of the Portable Neitzsche that I was quoting from.


az

That's really interesting azahar. Many years ago I read an old Doubleday tranlation by Francis Golfing of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, and Geneology of Morals. I thoroughly enjoyed reading both and thought, 'hey Nietzsche is really readable.' Later I tried reading a Penguin translation, (forget the translator), and found it all really dense and uninteresting. There was something about the 'immediacy' of the Golfing translation that really came alive.

I read both the "accepted" versions of Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose, and Foucault's Pendulum. Both seemed to be translated well - one phrase that I particularly remember from TNOTR is a description of a kitchen "throbbing with sausages", which I thought was great! Don't know what it said in the original.

I've also read "Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow" by Peter Høeg, which I guess is also written in forrin (Danish) and translated - that also reads very well.

RF

Not sure which translations I read of Eco's books - Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum - loved both of them very much and have also read them more than once.

Meanwhile, Noggin started Baudilino (sp?) and thought it was basically unreadable, due to being just very tedious and not going anywhere.

What I've always enjoyed most about Eco is that he neither talks down nor goes way over the head of his readers - he seems to presume a certain level of intelligence but it never comes across as 'showing off', more like he's just sharing stuff. I like that.

az

Umberto Eco? I've tried and tried and cannot get started.

Homer, Xenophon, Xerxes et al, no probs, but Eco?????

Isn't Eco a professor of linguistics ? maybe that's why his novels aren't easily accessable ?

Ah ha, this is where they went

I've read, although I cannot recall where, a very interesting bit by Terry Pratchett on the subject of translations. Or maybe it was o ne of his translators. His books are perhaps even more difficult since the humour and the puns are a key part of the work. There is also a lot in jokes that are culturally specific. These have to be modified to work for other cultures.

I read War and Peace, it took me 3 yrs cos it was so tedious. Yes, it may have a cast of thousands, but most of the are 2 dimensional. The fact it is propounding his personal theory of history probably compromises the story too. BUT the good point is that it was the version with the additons from Tolstoy himself, and it was his preferred tanslation. There were, again, cultural explanations (like the bit about having 3 names (I think), one formal, one intimate and one military).

>>I'm terrible with articles Ich auch! I'm not a particularly competent German speaker full stop - but my big breakthrough came when I learned to stop worrying about genders, adjectival endings, etc and just say it! I can get by. However...I'm always frustrated by a German friend (in Glasgow) who pretty much refuses to talk to me in German. Mind you...he's moving back there shortly with his two children...and *they* don't speak German either Eco - I think he's classed as a semiotician rather than a linguist. Translation - I've read die Blechttrommel in English and it's one of my favourite books. But Grass is clearly unhappy with the translation, so it must be even better in German. I love Grass - both the man and his books. I watched Die Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei recently. Firstly...why on earth is its English title 'The Edukators'? (and why with a K ). Secondly...the subtitles bore only a fleeting resemblence to what was being said. Good film, though. I heard sometyhing on the radio a while back about a new translation of War and Peace. The translator was particularly unhappy with some of the language used by the soldiers, who didn't speak the way he remembered from his National Service. In one battle scene, a soldier gets his leg blown off and says 'Goodness!' The Russian original was more pithy. It was a feminine noun, so he used 'Bitch!'. But then...I don't know how you'd translate Anna Kareinina properly. Although it's in Russian, the characters would usually, given their class, have spoken French to each other - and they'd usually 'vousvoyer'. But there would be a different pattern of usage for the Russian vi/ti. Apparently to a Russian, it's obvious from the context when they're speaking French or Russian...and there's a moment during an argument between Anna and Vronsky where she shows her scorn by slipping from French to Russian and vous to ti. By the way...why aren't you cunning linguists out there contributing to the Language and Linguistics thread? http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=508032&latest=1 How might one translate the following opening lines from English novels: The sweat wis lashin ofay Sickboy (Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh) Fortune smiles. Is a routine with fortune. No guffaws, no big laughs, just Mona Lisa auditioning and being blood claat quizzical. Backayard, them woulda ask her "Whey 'tis yuh smile at girl? Yuh have a date with a Yankee sailor?" (Bombay Duck - Farrukh Dhondy)

Most of the books I read are translations. Some of the translations are amazingly good and those are usually done by people who have written books themselves or are just old and wise and few are just natural born talents. I can't stop wondering how they actually managed to translate Lewis Carroll but they did it and it's excellent. Then again, Douglas Adams translations are no good at all and so he is not very popular here. Not even close to Pratchett, for example.

I've just remembered the famous story of when Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev visited Britain. At a formal dinner, Raisa had a long conversation with (I think it was) Peter Carrington about contemporary English novelists. After about half an hour, she said to him:
'And which contemporary Russian novelists do yo like?'

We parochial Brits read *very* few contemporary authors in translation.

Very true.
How common is translating to english for non english contemporary authors?
My knowledge of the whole area of translation is extremely slim, and it often comes as a surprise when I find out how many languages contemporary english authors are translated into.

Is translation run of the mill for all publishers in most languages? Or is it very much dependant on the author/editor/agent?

Here most of the bestsellers are translated, our writes are just not so productive. So all the business runs on translations indeed. Oh, sorry - for the record, I am from Estonia.

agent/publisher. It's a case of what will sell.

I heard this am that Anthony Beevor's new book about The Spanish Civil War has already been published in Spanish and has leapt to the top of the bestsellers list.

There was an interesting case when the Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare won the first Man Booker International Prize last year. Few outside the commitee had read him, and it was regarded as a "show off" choice. Then all the critics read him and raved. Of the other nominees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Booker_International_Prize
...8 out of the 18 wrote in English. Of the others...I know there are English translations of: Marquez, Grass, Kundera, Mahfouz and Oe. I'll confess to never having heard of Martinez, Tebbuchi or Yehoshua. (Or Ozick. Or - until recently - Kadare, who I definitely intend reading).

Then there was Turkey's Orhan Pamuk. I'd heard of his 'Istanbul: Memories and the City' before he was charged with treason - but he didn't sell much until he was in the news.

So many books but such a short life!

>>I know there are English translations of: Marquez, Grass, Kundera, Mahfouz and Oe.

How could I leave out Lem? He died last month. A wonderful writer!