The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

A copy of the original which when published in a foreign land has a translation next to it, maybe even with some notes about what stuff means, sounds really good to me.
But I never liked the concept of buying a book which is by author X when it isn't. Its by some local guy who happened to read the work of author x, maybe spoke to author x, and rewrote their book in your language.
As I say with novels it sits fairly uneasy. A huge part of the value of novels is also in the quality of the writing. I can never bring myself to read Murakami for this reason; English translations aren't by him and my Japanese is too awful to read the original. But there can be some value, especially for trash novels where the writing quality isn't the important point and its more about the story that is told (e.g. the Witcher novels).
With poems where the plot isn't really there and its all about the words....

[garbon]

A copy of the original which when published in a foreign land has a translation next to it, maybe even with some notes about what stuff means, sounds really good to me.
But I never liked the concept of buying a book which is by author X when it isn't. Its by some local guy who happened to read the work of author x, maybe spoke to author x, and rewrote their book in your language.
As I say with novels it sits fairly uneasy. A huge part of the value of novels is also in the quality of the writing. I can never bring myself to read Murakami for this reason; English translations aren't by him and my Japanese is too awful to read the original. But there can be some value, especially for trash novels where the writing quality isn't the important point and its more about the story that is told (e.g. the Witcher novels).
With poems where the plot isn't really there and its all about the words....

But isn't that just about where you draw the line? The impact of an editor on the author's vision comes to mind.

[Sheilbh]

Translating novels always sits uneasy with me, but it can be done with success.
Translating poetry though?
Isn't the choice of words the entire point?

Yes. There's loads of theory about it - I wrote a lot of essays about this at university because of some of my interests

Especially with poetry, but also with novels, you'd typically see a translation as an act of creation of a new text in the new language. There's like a sort of basic translation - so I can read a Spanish crime novel and enjoy it on the very basic level - but good translators are making something new. They're tapping into the subtext (though you all know my views on that ) and other potential meanings in the words and trying to re-create that rather than just the words on the page.

Ezra Pound did some very interesting "translations" of classical Chinese poetry, obviously there's lots of new versions of older texts (and huge hype at the minute around the new translations of the Odyssey and Beowulf) and Modern Poetry in Translation which was a journal founded by Ted Hughes. He couldn't speak any other languages so he would normally pair up with a mother-tongue speaker of, say, Polish to understand the literal words and meaning of Milosz and then try to write that poem as a poem in English. I think that model of a language expert working in tandem with a professional poet makes for the best translations - if not from a language-learning/academic sense.

Weirdly the best exampleof a translator I can think of in English is Anthea Bell who was the genius behind the English language translations of Asterix. But she also translated German literary novelists like Zweig and Sebald which actually kind of helped establish their reputation in English (i.e. not just as clearly very good but inaccessible writers outside of their language).

But I'd love to understand how, say, a James Joyce translator does their work

[celedhring]

If I have a grasp of the language what I try to do is hunt down bilingual editions - that's how I read all my French poetry for example. Like, I couldn't possibly read Baudelaire in a French edition, but with the translation by the side I can follow it pretty well, even if the translator changes a lot of the language.

[Josephus]

all this makes me glad I'm not going to be around for more than 30-35 more years.

[Sheilbh]

Police officer has now been arrested for kidnapping, murder and, apparently unrelatedly, indecent exposure

Apparently he was in the personal/diplomatic protection unit so was patrolling diplomatic grounds. Searches underway in his house and forests nearby. So it basically feels like the worst case scenario everyone was worried about has happened.

[Duque de Bragança]

[
But I'd love to understand how, say, James Joyce translators do their work

Fixed! 

At least for the second French translation of Ulysses.

Traductions françaises[modifier | modifier le code]
La première traduction[modifier | modifier le code]
La première traduction française a été commencée dès 1924 et fut faite par Auguste Morel, assisté par Stuart Gilbert et entièrement revue par Valery Larbaud et James Joyce31. La traduction a été publiée par La maison des Amis des Livres d'Adrienne Monnier en 192932 et c'est ce même texte qui a été repris en 1995 pour le second volume des Œuvres de Joyce dans la Bibliothèque de la Pléiade33.

La traduction de 2004[modifier | modifier le code]
La nouvelle traduction, qui est seulement la seconde du roman, date de 2004. Elle a été proposée par les éditions Gallimard à l'initiative de Stephen James, Solange Joyce et Antoine Gallimard.

Les arguments pour une nouvelle traduction[modifier | modifier le code]
Les auteurs de la nouvelle traduction offrent plusieurs raisons pour ce travail. Tout d'abord, la traduction d'Auguste Morel était très proche dans le temps de la parution d'Ulysse. Une telle proximité peut être une source de défauts ou empêcher de saisir toute la complexité de l'œuvre. De fait, près d'un siècle d'études sur le roman, le texte et son histoire, a permis de faire surgir de nombreux échos, références et résonances qui, selon les auteurs de la nouvelle traduction, avaient échappé à la première traduction.

De plus, tout travail littéraire portant la marque d'une langue, d'une esthétique ainsi que d'une idéologie à une époque donnée, une nouvelle traduction permettait une meilleure perception des innovations présentes dans la narration de Joyce.

Enfin, les auteurs de la nouvelle traduction estimaient qu'une nouvelle traduction était nécessaire pour respecter autant que possible l'ordre des mots dans la phrase de Joyce pour faire ressortir plus en profondeur la musicalité de son texte34. En effet, l'écrivain donne priorité aux sensations des personnages afin d'approcher au maximum « l'effet de réalité. » Les mots sont alors malmenés pour correspondre totalement aux pensées des personnages, ce qui donne une quantité de mots-valises. La musicalité possède une place également très importante. Les onomatopées sont utilisées fréquemment, un rythme est donné aux phrases, la ponctuation est elle aussi malmenée afin de coller au rythme. De nombreuses références à la musique, au music-hall ou encore à l'opéra parsèment l'œuvre.

Les traducteurs[modifier | modifier le code]
Parlant de son roman, Joyce déclarait qu'il l'avait écrit de dix-huit points de vue différents qui sont autant de styles différents. Cela a donc favorisé un travail de traduction collectif. Ce travail à plusieurs possède l'avantage de donner au livre une résonance multiple et donc d'éviter une traduction trop personnelle.

Une équipe de huit traducteurs s'est donc composée de la sorte :

Trois écrivains
Tiphaine Samoyault
Patrick Drevet
Sylvie Doizelet
Un traducteur littéraire
Bernard Hœpffner
Quatre universitaires familiers de l'œuvre de Joyce
Marie-Danièle Vors
Pascal Bataillard
Michel Cusin
Jacques Aubert
Jacques Aubert était aussi chargé de la coordination ainsi que de l'harmonisation des travaux individuels.

La traduction d'Auguste Morel, Stuart Gilbert et Valery Larbaud n'a été gardée que pour l'épisode des "Bœufs du Soleil".

OTOH, Saramago's prose is sometimes full of castillanisms so it should not be too hard to find or create some in Catalan.  As for Castillan, obviously tougher. Lusitanisms then, to keep the stale Iberianism of Saramago? 

How is Proust in English with the very long sentences? I guess they would have to be even longer in German (2-3 pages ?). His peculiar use of passé composé can easily by translated in meaning but not necessarily form.

Dumbest change in a new translation I have seen in French, enough to complete pass on it, is the abandon of past tenses, namely passé simple, equivalent of preterit in litterary French.
Author claimed English preterit was more flexible as it included present (?!) so retranslated everything to the present de narration (not present perfect). I don't mind some use of présent de narration in opposition to passé simple, in specific instances to emphasize them but this is simply preteritophobia, a common trend nowadays in the French publishing world, which started in books for children and teenagers (past tenses are too complicated to them let's level do

Plus a new dumb translation of newspeak as néoparler. Parler is often a synonym of sub-dialect or jargon, at best, so it's problematic as well.
Formerly, novlangue.

https://www.letemps.ch/opinions/big-brother-retraduit-trahi-2018

Given examples are awful:

Deux exemples de traduction:

Le slogan du régime

1949: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

1950: La guerre c'est la paix. La liberté c'est l'esclavage. L'ignorance c'est la force.

2018: Guerre est paix. Liberté est servitude. Ignorance est puissance.

La Mentopolice

1949 : How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.

1950 : Combien de fois, et suivant quel plan, la Police de la Pensée se branchait-elle sur une ligne individuelle quelconque, personne ne pouvait le savoir.

2018 : A quelle fréquence et selon quel système la Mentopolice se branche sur un individu donné relève de la spéculation.

OTOH, as somebody pointed out, retranslating and removing nuances from the language of the novel, follows the spirit of Newspeak...

[Maladict]

Translating novels always sits uneasy with me, but it can be done with success.
Translating poetry though?
Isn't the choice of words the entire point?

I love my Hollander & Hollander translation of the Divine Comedy. He is a Dante scholar, she is a poet.
The text is bilingual and has a ton of annotations and commentary. It's the best of all worlds, if you're not well versed in pre-modern Italian. To dismiss it as inferior is doing a serious disservice to these people.

When it comes to the classics I usually take some time to read up on all the different translators before making a choice. To not read them unless you can read the original text seems unnecessarily limiting.

[The Brain]

Holland & Holland?

[Sheilbh]

How is Proust in English with the very long sentences? I guess they would have to be even longer in German (2-3 pages ?). His peculiar use of passé composé can easily by translated in meaning but not necessarily form.

Yeah - so Proust is a really interesting example. His first translator also translated loads of other things like Beowulf, the Song of Roland, lots of Stendhal etc. With Proust he took a lot of liberties and apparently Proust almost cancelled the contract - but decided not to because he heard from French people who could read his translator's work that the end product was very good in English. It may have helped that the translator was, like Proust, a cultivated, literary gay man who'd seen fin-de-siecle high society and the war. It's considered a classic of translation and there is a prize for French translation named after the translator - who had some prickly correspondence with Proust after it had been published because of some of his decisions

There is a new edition which has been in the works for a decade I think but has seven professional translators working on it. But the original English version now gets re-worked and is seen as a classic and is also read because it's the version that influenced Virginia Woolf and James Joyce It's a really good example of a translation being a work in its own right.

Interesting and thanks - will read (slowly) on the Joyce translators

Dumbest change in a new translation I have seen in French, enough to complete pass on it, is the abandon of passé simple, equivalent of preterit in litterary French.
Author claimed English preterit was more flexible as it included present (?!) so retranslated everything to the present de narration (not present perfect). I don't mind some use of présent de narration in opposition to passé simple, in specific instances to emphasize them but this is simply preteritophobia (a common trend nowadays in litterature).

I have no idea - we didn't learn grammar when I was a kid so the extent of grammar I know is from other languages and I know the meaning in English, but I don't necessarily know the rules for the same tense in English

Plus a new dumb translation of newspeak as néoparler. Parler is often a synonym of sub-dialect so it's problematic as well.
Formerly, novlangue.

I slightly prefer neoparler because in English one of the points of newspeak is that there's an implied degradation of the written word - it's newspeak. Which is sort of the opposite of our culture where we've valued the written word and not "oral" traditions. So that makes sense to me as possibly engaging with the sort of cricism in English language analysis of 1984.

OTOH, as somebody pointed out, retranslating and removing nuances from the language of the novel, follows the spirit of Newspeak...

[/quote]
Yes although it's also part of the question of what translation is. So you know historic English texts are not updated because they are still accessible on a pure language level to English readers, but generally the only historic translations that survive are ones that are either acknowledged as great works of art in their own terms (Alexander Pope's Homer) or were incredibly influential (Arther Golding's Metamorphosis which is probably the key "source" text for Shakespeare). There are loads of absolutely dreadful Victorian translations of the classics for example that bowldlerise meanings to protect their Victorian sensitivities and are just unreadable now. But there is that tension between the translation as a way of us having access to the text in another language, in which case it's worth regularly updating them, and as works on their own terms.

As I say in my head the greatest achievement of English translation is Asterix and I think it'll be very controversial if they ever decide to update that translation.

[Josquius]

Interestingly on Asterix I remember my GF not too long ago being surprised at how I liked it when I was a kid as it couldn't possibly work if not in French as the humour is so rooted in the language and culture.

I haven't done it for a while but I used to have a thing for collecting Asterix books in different languages. It seems it gets good translators everywhere given its popularity.

[Sheilbh]

Interestingly on Asterix I remember my GF not too long ago being surprised at how I liked it when I was a kid as it couldn't possibly work if not in French as the humour is so rooted in the language and culture.

I haven't done it for a while but I used to have a thing for collecting Asterix books in different languages. It seems it gets good translators everywhere given its popularity.

Yeah. And I think what's incredible about the translation is that it's still got humour very rooted in language and culture - just a different one which is an incredible achievement.

[Duque de Bragança]

So the only way to learn grammar in England is to go to elite schools and the like (public schools) and study humanities, as in Latin and Ancient Greek?
Level has degraded quite a bit in France, but grammar is still taught, even analyse logique (clause analysis?).

As for preterit/passé simple, I edited later so it's all past tenses which were replaced by present in French, which is even worse than what I read first.
There are lots of nuances in literary French, some of them with equivalents in literary English; not so much in common spoken French (hello passé composé). Though as a Lusophone, with strict tense agreement, this is not a problem for me.

[Sheilbh]

So the only way to learn grammar in England is to go to elite schools and the like (public schools) and study humanities, as in Latin and Ancient Greek?
Level has degraded quite a big in France, but grammar is still taught, even analyse logique (clause analysis?).

It's a generational thing - my generation did not learn grammar beyond "nouns are subject words", "verbs are doing words" and "adjectives are describing words". The only grammar I have learned - and I think Tyr's had the same experience - is really learning a foreign language. And it was that way in school too - the only grammar I learned was in French. It's incredibly frustrating that you have this two stage process of learning what the concept is (because you've no idea of it in English) and then learning the rules in x language.

I understand that one of Gove's education reforms was re-introducing grammar to the curriculum. I think they've probably gone too far but, and I disagree with all of my bobo friends about this, I generally think we should teach grammar at school because I wish I'd known it. I'm not really even sure what a clause analysis would be.

As for preterit/passé simple, I edited later so it's all past tenses which were replaced by present in French, which is even worse than what I read first.
There are lots of nuances in literary French, some of them with equivalents in literary English; not so much in common spoken French (hello passé composé). Though as a Lusophone, with strict tense agreement, this is not a problem for me.

Okay that decision seems weird - interesting but on the face of it a little odd.

[Oexmelin]

I slightly prefer neoparler because in English one of the points of newspeak is that there's an implied degradation of the written word - it's newspeak. Which is sort of the opposite of our culture where we've valued the written word and not "oral" traditions. So that makes sense to me as possibly engaging with the sort of cricism in English language analysis of 1984.

This has long been an issue with French translators who seemed incapable of coping with various registers of language considered "improper", like orality, or regional variation, or even deliberate mistakes in the original work. Everyone ends up sounding like a proper bourgeois.