Thou art Translated!, or how to say "Kitten Heels" in Russian

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,1301955,00.html
I'm sure a lot of people have probably read this in The Guardian already, but I found it via Bookslut and it was fascinating and truly heartwarming.
How do ILBooks-ers feel about translated literature? I often feel that I am missing quite a bit of the novel/non-fiction etc. when reading in translation, but I am not sure what the alternative is.
Are some translators better than others?

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 15:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I loved that article. Unfortunately, there's nothing like reading the original, but translation is a fascinating art. Murakami is a good author to look at in comparing translations: he has three translators. Wendy Lesser did an essay comparing Alfred Birnbaum to Jay Rubin: http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i05/05b00701.htm. The third, J. Philip Gabriel, is interviewed about his translation work here: http://www.critiquemagazine.com/onwriting/gabriel.html.

― zan, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Translating Humor: P. G. Wodehouse And French

― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 20:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Yep, just after readin' the bit about one/on my head is spinning and I'm going, "Shit, I'm just going to try to learn every language on earth, because no human could ever get this translation shit right."

Then again, not all senses of humor are as nuanced as Wodehouse's.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Think of translated Ulysses! *shivers*

― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:10 (twenty-one years ago)

but heck, Finnegans Wake just CANNOT be translated!

― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Finnegans Wake is translated even in the original. Parts of it, at least.

― SRH (Skrik), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

translated even in the original is different from translation of the original. :-)

― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 17:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Finnegans Wake has been translated. The ALP chapter was translated into French early on; more impressively, I think all or some part of it has been translated into Japanese.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 20:14 (twenty-one years ago)

PANIC IN THE STREETS!

― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 22:06 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.honco.net/japanese/04/page4.html
http://www.mediamatic.net/cwolk/view/5184

― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 22:10 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.