recommend a translation

So yeah, there are elements of the translators trying to preserve the authenticity of the Japanese-ness of HM's writing by stripping out the western elements (esp. the richness of the ~serious fiction~ academians take on the pop-culture references: "zmg how gauche...", go fuck yourself Jamie James!)

On the amazing 00s film poll that's going on right now, a poster said something about one of my favorite films: "I generally don't like Taiwanese films" and I was like... what the hell does Taiwan have to do with this movie? Strip away the language and the setting, these people are not living in traditional huts in the mountains speaking Hokkien, they are a family living in an apartment highrise who go to school and work (dad works at a video game company for fuck's sake) and are dealing with dying relatives and past-romances (hey, she lives in America!) and dealing with loser friends and the modern condition... when did these themes become exclusively Taiwanese?

Back to HM, I met him 2x. Once at a lecture and once at a book signing. When asked about his works being translated to English, he felt it was unimportant... that as long as the "root/essence" [本] is preserved in the work, the spirit will continue no matter what language it is translated in. I pretty much winced at this statement, but I can sympathize with him, as it's out of his control and he's probably better off not worrying about it. And then I had a thought driving home: in time, all major works get re-translated. So maybe he's not thinking about the "now" but eternally.

So hopefully someday we'll get a Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that isn't stripped of the Western pop-culture references, the jazzy hipster dialect, the whimsical chapters deemed unnecessary by some stuffy Harvard prof...

have never been a big fan of HM, but will fully admit that it may be because of stuffy translations. (can't recall who did NW or HBWATEOTW). all his narrators sound the same. I did read what I talk about when I talk about running and he seemed like a really cool dude. I would have had a drink at his jazz bar.

I can definitely get behind a crusade against a stuffy harvard lit professor. yeah!

really looking forward to Mathias Enard's Zone

hmm...reading about it and wondering why I'm not more enthusiastic than I can manage at the mo.

did you read the excerpt at conversational reading? it sounds awesome

I was reading a review of Zone at Quarterly reading. Can't find any excerpts of his writing except this short story

Or Quarterly conversation...

here's a bit

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=2789

Just read that. Seems that resistance is futile :-)

lydia davis is blogging abt her new translation of madame bovary over at the paris review - http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/author/ldavis/

sorta disappointed that she doesn't seem too interested in gossipy shit-talking about the existing translations

Thanks for the link - really enjoyed that, especially when she talks of her experience of translating Proust.

what's the best translation of turgenev's 'fathers and sons'? i was waiting for what seemed like the inevitable pevear/volokhonsky version, and then i just stumbled across an interview in which they said they'll never do it!

i can't say which i read—it was old and used, likely a popular one in the 60s or 70s—but it didn't really strike me as so literary as to matter a lot what the translation was. it was just exciting to read people arguing about important stuff.

The one I read was the current Penguin Classics one. I loved that book! Got me hooked on Tugenev in a big way.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/28/ahmet-hamdi-tanpinar-the-time-regulation-institute-turkey-western-time

Great piece.

Out of curiosity, has anyone read all the new Penguin Proust translations?

I read the Lydia Davis Swann's Way, the first time I'd read any Proust, and loved it, and was quite convinced by her arguments in defence of her style of translation so I had presumed I would continue with the other new translations rather than switching to the older ones but I never really see people talking much about the other translations or translators, so now I'm not so sure.

Great piece.
Nice. Thanks. That piece turns out to be more or less the preface of the Penguin edition of the book.

k, that explains why something published in The Guardian is any good. I got a 2nd hand copy of A mind at Peace three years ago (or so) and it was such a bad year for reading I sold it.

I did see a copy of The Time Regulation Institute 2nd hand about a couple of months ago and didn't bother :-(

robin - I have read all the other Penguin translations. At the time I felt they weren't talking as much about it because Swann's Way is all most people will read. It didn't bother me, nor did I feel I wanted to get to Scott Moncrieff, for some reason I can't get on with him.

Cool, thanks, I already have the second one in the new translations so I'll stick with them for now anyway.

For once, something to look forward to from this publisher.

https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/the-possessed

four nobel laureates not good enough for ya?

Sounds intriguing!

four nobel laureates not good enough for ya?

― crutch of england (ledge), Monday, 21 August 2023 bookmarkflaglink

When this publisher is written about every couple of months or so they mention the laureates but Alexievich is their best one and Dalkey had already published her book on Chernobyl. Other publishers had already bought out some of her other books so Fitzcarraldo don't 'own' her.

Ernaux was also not solely discovered by them either. Plenty of translations pre-2014.

I haven't tried Olga Tokarczuk.

Who is the fourth?

When you've read the book you can come back and give us your thoughts on the translation.

The fourth is elfriede jelinek. Yokarczuk is the only one I've read (and rate highly). I'm not into their famous blue covers.

Tokarczuk, yok yok.

Moncrief's translation is beautiful, but it's almost as much Moncrief as it is Proust (from what I understand--I can sorta read French). I have yet to try the Davis translation.

"elfriede jelinek"

Ah ok, she's been published by a range of publishers.

I think Europa supporting Ferrante or Archipelago doing the same for Knausgaard is more significant even if they didn't win the Nobel.

As I delve more and more into Shakespeare's plays its become a portal into other, older English translations. With Rabelais and Cervantes I have begun to compile a list in my head, most of which I have read, a couple not. I am taking on the Florio translation next.

Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel (tr. Thomas Urquhart)
Montaigne - Essays (tr. John Florio)
Cervantes - Don Quixote (tr. Tobias Smollett)
Homer - Odyssey/Illiad (tr. George Chapman)
Ovid - Metamorphoses (tr. Arthur Golding)
Plutarch - Lives (tr. Thomas North)

i just started reading the Penguin / M.A Screech Rabelais. do you have any thoughts on Screech vs. Urquhart?

this gets into it somewhat:

https://www.timothyhampton.org/blog/posts/20940

Thanks really like that blog post. I really like Urquhart's solution the most.

No thoughts on "Screech vs. Urquhart?" other than you probably ought to read both.

Really enjoying the Florio, though the rhythm of it means Montaigne's arguments lose some lucidity, at times (though they can be hard to follow iirc from reading them at like 20)