![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirStanley Hall on the Feast of All Souls
I started reading some of the posts on Reading Room, the New York Times blog that functions like an online book club. At the moment, they're discussing a new translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the same duo who brought Anna Karenina to Oprah's Book Club. I haven't read any of their translations; in fact, I think most of the Russian novel translations I've read are by Constance Garnett. In any case, Reading Room has been discussing the merits and flaws of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation style, and while I haven't read far enough into the comment threads to summarize what's being said, it's interesting to see the different priorities people have when it comes to the quality of a translation.
It reminded me of a rant that I've been long composing in my head on the subject.
Okay, let's not rehash the old axioms: translations do not and cannot stand up to reading the work in its original language as written by the author. In fact, even when we read the work in its original language, we probably don't understand the full breadth of meaning unless it's our native language. The fidelity of a translation when it comes to humor, literature and poetry is necessarily imperfect.
I remember listening to two conversations on this subject, once with my roommates while we were sitting in Lowell dining hall not so long ago, and more recently while eating breakfast at the divisional retreat up at Lake Tahoe with a group of other first-year grad students and a venerable professor. Both conversations basically concluded that translations were futile and could not be trusted. The undertone was, "Why read translations at all, when they are so unreliable?"
Well, to that I can only retort, I'd rather read a translation than nothing at all. If I limited myself to only the languages I knew, I would only be able to read books written in English, Korean and maybe French. Of course, I could always learn more languages, but at this late stage in life, how many more languages can I realistically acquire? Even the most accomplished polyglot cannot possibly read every written language in the world. Are we then to deprive ourselves of literature written in French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, ancient Greek, Latin, cuneiform, simply because we are not capable of understanding the original language? Of course we'll be missing the nuances, of course we won't understand the cultural context. But should I deprive myself of War and Peace in however imperfect a form, simply because I will never really understand what the novel is like in the original Russian? I hope not. Even in translation, War and Peace is clearly a masterpiece.
The professor at the breakfast table--who I should add is extremely cultured and well-read, more so than any of us young students--mentioned the case of a badly translated Chinese poem that had a completely different meaning than the original. Since I had audited an Asian poetry course last spring, where we read all poems in translation, I wanted to protest. Was the mistranslated poem a bad poem? Despite the deviation in meaning, did it still count as good poetry? If so, then wasn't reading it still a worthwhile experience? Why, in this postmodern age, when we throw about the phrase "death of the author" at our own convenience, can't we appreciate the value of a translation that creates new meaning?
That being said, I do acknowledge that a translation that bears no resemblance to the original should not masquerade as a translation; there are, after all, certain expectations that come with the label. But if we obsess and obsess over the flaws of a translation, we'll never appreciate the fact that it is bringing to us a work of writing that would otherwise be inaccessible. I think the solution, in fact, is to read as many translations of the same work as possible, which is why I am tempted to go look for that Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace at my next foray into the local bookstores.
People speak of reading War and Peace like they speak of climbing Mt. Everest, but I think Tolstoy is actually a very readable author (at least from what I can tell of his style from translations). The book is long but the prose isn't difficult. Well, I suppose the pace is slow, but I've never really objected to that in a book. The Magic Mountain is much shorter, for example, but I still haven't finished the book after four years (I have about a quarter of the book left to go) because I find Mann much more difficult than Tolstoy. Tolstoy fundamentally writes plot; he might proselytise at his reader, but at the very least, he does it through dialogue (and interesting dialogue to boot). Mann requires mental energy, which I don't always have.
More on books: just learned that the new Keira Knightley move, Atonement, is based on an Ian McEwan novel of the same title. I know, I know, I'm a little slow...I saw the trailer for the movie a few weeks ago when I went to watch Eastern Promises with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladydaera but I didn't realize it was based on a book. Having just seen a reference to McEwan as a profound writer, I learned that Atonement is on the Time list of All-Time 100 Novels.
Somewhere, someone has made a meme with this list, where you bold all the titles you've read, italicize those you want to read, strikeout those you hated, etc. I'm not going to be redundant; instead I'm going to comment on the list itself and why I found some of the titles surprising. First of all, the name is misleading; it's actually the top 100 English-language novels written after 1923. Among the titles, I have read, I'm kind of pleased to see genre works like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and William Gibson's Neuromancer on the list (Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are, of course, on there as well). Including the comic book series, Watchmen, which I haven't read, is a nice open-minded touch.
I'm a little surprised that they included several recently published novels as well: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go came out the same year as the list itself. Isn't it a little too soon to say that it belongs on the list of top 100 novels of all time (even with the small-print qualifiers)? Don't get me wrong, I thought that book was amazing; probably the best Ishiguro I've read so far. And why is Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections on the list? Okay, okay, I realize that it won a lot of awards, and there was enough critical hype about it that even I picked up the book. I mean, I suppose it was well-written insofar as it was intense...but it was intensely grotesque. Yes, that's the right word: grotesque. Not grotesque in the "so horrific as to be vaguely fascinating way" but grotesque as in, say, that description in Sartre's Nausea where the protagonist looks at a close-up of his own face and is overwhelmed with disgust. I mean, I understand that it was the point of the book, and Franzen masterfully evoked that existential nausea or whatever sensation he was going for, but I still can't bring myself to recommend the book. Well, maybe I'm also biased a little by the recent negative reviews I've read of his latest book.
I'm glad Infinite Jest made the list, but why not include Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai? I distinctly remember a Time magazine article listing her as one of its top 100 innovators for writing such an unusual, experimental novel. Yes, I'm biased because I loved the book, but nonetheless, it isn't on the list.
Many of the books are high school English literature curriculum favorites. But why include 1984 and not also Brave New World? Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe 1984 should be on that list. And while I don't object to two occurrences of Faulkner or Woolf, do we really need two Pynchon novels on the list? Isn't Gravity's Rainbow enough? Then again, I haven't read anything by Pynchon yet, so maybe I shouldn't make judgments just yet.
I definitely want to read Atwood's The Blind Assassin now, as well as Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey (which my college roommate assured me was wonderful), and Martin Amis' Lucky Jim, which I thinkteam7 put on a reading list somewhere. And I probably should attempt Gravity's Rainbow at some point, but why do all the back cover summaries make it sound so dreary?
And now for something completely different...
Via Gizmodo (someone please tell me to stop reading Gawker blogs): a steampunk Victorian laptop. What a gorgeous customization! There's a Youtube video showing how it was made, although I can't actually view it because I'm on a Linux computer at the moment.
Yours &c.
I started reading some of the posts on Reading Room, the New York Times blog that functions like an online book club. At the moment, they're discussing a new translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the same duo who brought Anna Karenina to Oprah's Book Club. I haven't read any of their translations; in fact, I think most of the Russian novel translations I've read are by Constance Garnett. In any case, Reading Room has been discussing the merits and flaws of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation style, and while I haven't read far enough into the comment threads to summarize what's being said, it's interesting to see the different priorities people have when it comes to the quality of a translation.
It reminded me of a rant that I've been long composing in my head on the subject.
Okay, let's not rehash the old axioms: translations do not and cannot stand up to reading the work in its original language as written by the author. In fact, even when we read the work in its original language, we probably don't understand the full breadth of meaning unless it's our native language. The fidelity of a translation when it comes to humor, literature and poetry is necessarily imperfect.
I remember listening to two conversations on this subject, once with my roommates while we were sitting in Lowell dining hall not so long ago, and more recently while eating breakfast at the divisional retreat up at Lake Tahoe with a group of other first-year grad students and a venerable professor. Both conversations basically concluded that translations were futile and could not be trusted. The undertone was, "Why read translations at all, when they are so unreliable?"
Well, to that I can only retort, I'd rather read a translation than nothing at all. If I limited myself to only the languages I knew, I would only be able to read books written in English, Korean and maybe French. Of course, I could always learn more languages, but at this late stage in life, how many more languages can I realistically acquire? Even the most accomplished polyglot cannot possibly read every written language in the world. Are we then to deprive ourselves of literature written in French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, ancient Greek, Latin, cuneiform, simply because we are not capable of understanding the original language? Of course we'll be missing the nuances, of course we won't understand the cultural context. But should I deprive myself of War and Peace in however imperfect a form, simply because I will never really understand what the novel is like in the original Russian? I hope not. Even in translation, War and Peace is clearly a masterpiece.
The professor at the breakfast table--who I should add is extremely cultured and well-read, more so than any of us young students--mentioned the case of a badly translated Chinese poem that had a completely different meaning than the original. Since I had audited an Asian poetry course last spring, where we read all poems in translation, I wanted to protest. Was the mistranslated poem a bad poem? Despite the deviation in meaning, did it still count as good poetry? If so, then wasn't reading it still a worthwhile experience? Why, in this postmodern age, when we throw about the phrase "death of the author" at our own convenience, can't we appreciate the value of a translation that creates new meaning?
That being said, I do acknowledge that a translation that bears no resemblance to the original should not masquerade as a translation; there are, after all, certain expectations that come with the label. But if we obsess and obsess over the flaws of a translation, we'll never appreciate the fact that it is bringing to us a work of writing that would otherwise be inaccessible. I think the solution, in fact, is to read as many translations of the same work as possible, which is why I am tempted to go look for that Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace at my next foray into the local bookstores.
People speak of reading War and Peace like they speak of climbing Mt. Everest, but I think Tolstoy is actually a very readable author (at least from what I can tell of his style from translations). The book is long but the prose isn't difficult. Well, I suppose the pace is slow, but I've never really objected to that in a book. The Magic Mountain is much shorter, for example, but I still haven't finished the book after four years (I have about a quarter of the book left to go) because I find Mann much more difficult than Tolstoy. Tolstoy fundamentally writes plot; he might proselytise at his reader, but at the very least, he does it through dialogue (and interesting dialogue to boot). Mann requires mental energy, which I don't always have.
More on books: just learned that the new Keira Knightley move, Atonement, is based on an Ian McEwan novel of the same title. I know, I know, I'm a little slow...I saw the trailer for the movie a few weeks ago when I went to watch Eastern Promises with
ladydaera but I didn't realize it was based on a book. Having just seen a reference to McEwan as a profound writer, I learned that Atonement is on the Time list of All-Time 100 Novels.Somewhere, someone has made a meme with this list, where you bold all the titles you've read, italicize those you want to read, strikeout those you hated, etc. I'm not going to be redundant; instead I'm going to comment on the list itself and why I found some of the titles surprising. First of all, the name is misleading; it's actually the top 100 English-language novels written after 1923. Among the titles, I have read, I'm kind of pleased to see genre works like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and William Gibson's Neuromancer on the list (Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are, of course, on there as well). Including the comic book series, Watchmen, which I haven't read, is a nice open-minded touch.
I'm a little surprised that they included several recently published novels as well: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go came out the same year as the list itself. Isn't it a little too soon to say that it belongs on the list of top 100 novels of all time (even with the small-print qualifiers)? Don't get me wrong, I thought that book was amazing; probably the best Ishiguro I've read so far. And why is Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections on the list? Okay, okay, I realize that it won a lot of awards, and there was enough critical hype about it that even I picked up the book. I mean, I suppose it was well-written insofar as it was intense...but it was intensely grotesque. Yes, that's the right word: grotesque. Not grotesque in the "so horrific as to be vaguely fascinating way" but grotesque as in, say, that description in Sartre's Nausea where the protagonist looks at a close-up of his own face and is overwhelmed with disgust. I mean, I understand that it was the point of the book, and Franzen masterfully evoked that existential nausea or whatever sensation he was going for, but I still can't bring myself to recommend the book. Well, maybe I'm also biased a little by the recent negative reviews I've read of his latest book.
I'm glad Infinite Jest made the list, but why not include Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai? I distinctly remember a Time magazine article listing her as one of its top 100 innovators for writing such an unusual, experimental novel. Yes, I'm biased because I loved the book, but nonetheless, it isn't on the list.
Many of the books are high school English literature curriculum favorites. But why include 1984 and not also Brave New World? Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe 1984 should be on that list. And while I don't object to two occurrences of Faulkner or Woolf, do we really need two Pynchon novels on the list? Isn't Gravity's Rainbow enough? Then again, I haven't read anything by Pynchon yet, so maybe I shouldn't make judgments just yet.
I definitely want to read Atwood's The Blind Assassin now, as well as Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey (which my college roommate assured me was wonderful), and Martin Amis' Lucky Jim, which I think
team7 put on a reading list somewhere. And I probably should attempt Gravity's Rainbow at some point, but why do all the back cover summaries make it sound so dreary?And now for something completely different...
Via Gizmodo (someone please tell me to stop reading Gawker blogs): a steampunk Victorian laptop. What a gorgeous customization! There's a Youtube video showing how it was made, although I can't actually view it because I'm on a Linux computer at the moment.
Yours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-03 04:19 am (UTC)Even works from the past could need "translation," as it were--the bawdy parts of Shakespeare aren't obvious to the modern ear, or else it'd never have the play in high schools that it does. Then there's also the potential issue (as I revive authorial intent) of failed communication in a work--the author meant to say X, but the popular reception is Y, and which way should we translate?
(And I'm reminded of an afternoon seminar I took from Royall Tyler, where I presented a "misreading"--grammatically, it's hard to support, I have to admit--of the first section of the Tales of Ise. I just found out this year that my "misreading" was a popular one for several centuries of commentators in Japan. So, there you are.)
There's also personal allusions and meanings which only take place in the mind of the individual reader, based on their own background... in between, there's group meaning, isn't there?
I think the issue of the inaccurate translation, like of the Chinese poem mentioned, is a question of honesty after all--it's labeled as being a transmission of the original, in at least some form. Some "translations" develop a life of their own, like FitzGerald and the Rubaiyyat. Which puns to emphasize or whether to preserve the meter... those are all parts of the question of being a reliable and transparent window into the original (which might not be the "original" at all, but the consensus--and bloody hell, I really wanted to use 優勝 there, and I'm not quite sure consensus is the word I mean, but that's what comes from reading too much in Japanese academic works in the morning--the consensus reading of the text, or the scholarly reading of the text, etc).
...And I'll refrain from going into my "communicative theory, and why we might not ever get at the intent of the Author, why it's useful to assume that there was an intent" rant.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-03 04:24 am (UTC)And I agree with your comments on translations. I CAN read books in Chinese, if I worked really hard at it and was really patient, but even so I inevitably miss things because my grasp isn't strong enough - I can, uh, barely understand Chinese poetry, for one. >_>;;
Attaining the language level to read a work in its original language, especially if it's a difficult work, is hard and TAKES FOREVER. So long as different languages exist, there are no perfect solutions to the gap. You just... do what you can. Of which translations are one of them. XD;
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-03 05:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-03 03:09 pm (UTC)Haha, I actually had to read this debate-thing about the merits of translating a work to another language for a SAT practice test. It's a bit of a toss-up, but I generally agree that a subpar translation is better than none at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-04 04:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 05:26 am (UTC)I think reading in the original is better if you're looking for the original text (and not, say, looking at the reception of the text in a later period or different culture), but I agree that a translation is better than nothing. It's not realistic to assume that everyone can read originals, given that more people than not have trouble with a second language, and it's also incredibly limiting. It limits one's worldview and perspectives and stunts one's mind.