Questions about Translations

Have you ever wished that you were multilingual, well-versed in Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian and Russian, and that you could understand and enjoy all the great classics in the original languages that they were written? I have, many times. But alas, I'm already having trouble with English alone, so I have no choice but to settle for translations.

Recently I added Confessions by Saint Augustine to my "To Read in 2009" list, and last night I spend more than two hours in a bookstore poring over six different translations, hoping to select a good one. Finally I was able to narrow the list down to three, but the result still wasn't quite satisfactory. My decisions for rejection were quite arbitrary, one because I thought the language was too vulgar, another because the translator didn't have any credentials, and another because of the lack of biblical references in the book.

The experience got me thinking about the problem with translation in general. Some say that a translator should be loyal to the original work, and give a translation as literal as possible, while others argue that a literal translation may be missing the spirit or the literary value of the original.

I know that many people in this group have more experience with translations and literary criticisms than I. So I'd like to get all your opinions on this.

1. What is a good translation?
2. How do you pick one?

If you live near a good research library or are independently wealthy, Olive Classe's Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English ($550) is an interesting resource. Of course, it only covers translations through the early 1980s. I don't know if it has been updated since.

Personally, I prefer a translation that is true to the spirit of the work rather than a translation that sticks as close to the literal as possible.

#2: urania1,

Thanks for the recommendation. It would be nice if there is a Wiki-type website for this type of encyclopedias, so they can update it regularly. Do you find it helpful personally?

Here's a link to a Google Books limited page scan of Classe's book. It discusses the translation of The Prince by Machiavelli. It will give you an idea of how the reference works. When you get there, click on page 883.

-->1 booksontrial:
I am also confined to reading in English for the time being, and I read a lot of translated fiction. It sounds like you already have the answer to your question 1, which is to read a bit of it, if you can. That won't give you the entire picture, but it will give an idea of what the translator is trying to achieve. I tend to find that in really clunky translations the dialogue tends to be awkward, and sentences sometimes read as non-sequiturs. When it come to classics, especially older ones, some translators like to use really archaic language (you = thee and thou, have = hast, etc.). This doesn't make it a bad translation necessarily, but it suits some tastes more than others. Finally, if the book is a real classic, there will almost certainly be some discussion of the various translations on the net somewhere. Writers like Dostoevsky, for instance, have a few very well known translators who are all fairly different. You may not want to wade through screeds of academic debate, but some are clearly praised more highly than others.

After a while you get to know some of the better names. Gregory Rabassa is a great translator form Spanish, Ralph Manheim from French and German, William Weaver in Italian. I also like Michael Glenny from Russian. Everything they do tends to be well done, even if you are not keen on the book itself.

#1 If you are still interested in a copy of Confessisons here is an ISBN for the one I just finished reading 0785242252 / 9780785242253.

The only thing I did not like about it was that the translator uses Thee, Thou and Thine. I don't care for that. It did have Bible citations and all-in-all it was well translated.

If you need more information about that particular book, leave a message on my profile page and I'll help you with additional info as best I can.

#4: urania1,

Thanks for the link to The Prince. It's very helpful, and timely too, as the book is next on my "To Read" list. :) I also find Google Books a good site for previewing books.

#5: depressaholic,

I like to read translators' notes and introductions to gauge their competence and the depth of their background knowledge, and to get an idea of what they are trying to achieve. Come to think of it, that's how I selected the translations of Confessions.

Thanks for recommending good translators for different languages, I'll keep that in mind when I come across their works.

#6: george1295,

Thanks for the note. I just read your review of Confessions, and am looking forward to reading it myself.

I am totally immersed in translations at the moment. I am translating the work of a major Czech poet, winner of the Nobel Prize, Jaroslav Seifert. And I have just had a translation published in Belletrista. I can message you the link privately, if you wish.

Michael Henry Heim is another excellent translator, translating well from a number of languages. And in Russian translation the stars now are Pevear and Volokhonsky. I am also currently loving the translation of Szymborska's poetry, done by Baranczak and Cavanagh. Masterful translation.

Your questions are excellent ones. It is a fine fine line which a translator must be aware of. There was an interesting discussion of this in relation to translation from the Greek, I think on TomCatMurr's thread. If you are interested in classical Greek translations, I can try to track this down.

>10 polutropos: I'll second Andrew's support for Baranczak and Cavanagh! I have a couple of parallel texts, Szymborska's original and their English translation, and it's fascinating to compare them. Sometimes they're very, very close, whilst at other times the translation has moved so far away that it's almost a different poem - but it's not, because somehow it's still close to the spirit of the original. I waste a lot of time wondering how they decided to approach this particular poem in one way, and this other in another! (Baranczak, I'm told, is one of the most respected translators of Shakespeare into Polish, and another friend raved about his translations of children's stories.)

I have now become totally paranoid about author rights and while I used to post poems I like without worrying about it, I no longer do, but here is a short excerpt from the Baranczak and Cavanagh translation of Szymborska, which to me is an example of translation magnificence:

from "Allegro Ma Non Troppo" by Wislawa Szymborska, in Poems New and Collected, p. 132.

Life, you're beautiful (I say)
you just couldn't get more fecund,
more befrogged or nightingaley,
more anthillful or sproutspouting. ...

Oh how grassy is this hopper,
how this berry ripely rasps. ...

I read a fair amount of translations and I guess, to begin with, I would have to ponder what a 'good' translation is. Since I have read no other languages than English (oh, a sentence or two of French) how would I know if the translation is a good imitation of the original (I think it was Rabassa that said translations can only be an imitation of the original). That said, I like a translation that is not awkward; one that reads smoothly in English and one that doesn't rely on cliched American idioms (or UK ones for that matter).

The first icelandic mystery of Arnuldur Indridson's that I read seemed at first to have an awkward translation, but I eventually settled into it and realized it was just the imitation of what I assume is the author's spare prose style.

Despite my love of poetry, I have not fallen in love with translated poetry (although I admit a brief love affair with Pasternak's in the 1980s). Translated poetry seems by definition to be missing something. How can one recreate the music of one language into another? The music, the rhythms and sounds of the words in poetry is as important to me as imagery, idea and language.

#12: polutropos,

Pardon my illiteracy in poetry. "Allegro Ma Non Troppo" sounds like "be fruitful and multiply", but in many more words.

#13: avaland,

I tend to think that translation is not just an imitation, but a re-presentation. Translating poetry, or recreating music, as you put it, is possible if one uses harmonics or counterpoint, a translator may not be able to follow strictly the original rhythms, but s/he can definitely create a new piece that captures and even magnifies the beauty of the original.

allegro ma non troppo means fast (with verve) but not too fast. It has the same number of words and syllables as "be fruitful and multiply."

Robert

>16 Mr.Durick:,

Whence the name change?

17> Over there behind the shed.

Robert

Which shed?

>15 booksontrial: re: translated poetry: perhaps so, but I remain skeptical. I would have liked to have had someone read Pasternak to me in Russian while I read the translations. I wonder if anyone has thought to do that. . .

Rach in #10 mentions parallel texts. I do not have the particular ones she mentions, but I have others, and they are always a thrilling experience.

You are looking for music, Lois, and you are right to do so, IMHO. Few translations from the languages I feel totally fluent in, do in fact have music in them. My own self-imposed task from the very beginning has been to make the English I translate into "sing". With some of my Seiferts I would like to think I succeed. I hope to be submitting some before the end of the year, and we will see if the editors, and perhaps the readers, agree.

Szymborska's translators whom I mention above, do frequently succeed.

Some translations from the Greek (and no, I do not speak the original) also seem to me to sing.

It is a tough tough thing to do well.

>21 polutropos: Lois, your wanting to have Pasternak read to you in Russian while you read the translation reminds me of a Mourid Barghouti reading I went to in June as part of the London Review of Books World Literature Weekend. He read several of his poems first in Arabic and then in English - not quite what you're saying, I know, but it was amazing. That way we got the music of the original straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. His translator is his wife (actually we've had part of this conversation before, because his wife is Radwa Ashour, author of Granada which I've promised to read for Belletrista), and he described how they work very closely together. He said he didn't think he'd be able to let anyone less close to him translate his poetry for fear that they wouldn't be able to understand, let alone translate, his ideas and how he expresses them.

>22 rachbxl: yes, that is exactly an experience I would have liked.

>21 polutropos: But one would not want the English to "sing", if the original language does not? As we know, different poets write differently and not all are keen on the same poetic devices.

#22: rachbxl,

Amazing story. I agree that someone who is close to the author is more qualified than others to translate a highly personal work. But, if they are true works of art, they'll be read, understood and appreciated by many strangers, so for that reason people who are total strangers to the authors can provide good translations too.

>24 booksontrial: Agreed. (If that weren't the case, the rest of us may as well just give up!) When I heard Barghouti say that I started to think about it along the lines of what you say. The author, in creating a piece of literature, in a sense sets it free into the world, and whilst they know what they meant, they can't expect to have any control over my reading and interpretation of it, or yours, or my neighbour's - and a translation is just an extension of a reading, I think.

in #23 above avaland said "But one would not want the English to "sing", if the original language does not? As we know, different poets write differently and not all are keen on the same poetic devices."

Clearly we must define what we mean by "sing". Of course different poets and fiction writers use different kinds of language, some lush and some spare. They "sing" in different ways. Hemingway's prose in Old Man and the Sea, it can be argued, "sings". Gerard Manley Hopkins "sings", though in a totally different way.

On another thread, Murr recently quoted Dostoevsky talking about Victor Hugo, saying "VH is a singer, clear as an angel."

#26: polutropos,

Great point.

It reminds me of what Renzo Piano said during an interview, that good architecture sings. (Though I'd argue that it's more natural for Italians to sing than the rest of us. :) )

How exactly would you define what it means to "sing"?

>13 avaland:, Lois, I have the same problem with translated poetry that you seem to. When I was reading a lot of Russian poetry (in Russian, back when my skill in that language was still decent), I discovered that a lot of translators would try to preserve rhymes from the original poem in the translation, which led to a lot of really, really bad translations.

To Booksontrial et al.:

Iʻm a follower of R.L. Stevenson, who is quoted as saying, " A translation should SOUND LIKE a translation." Thus, the late 19th c. translations of The Odyssey and The Iliad (Lang, Leaf & Myers, and Butcher do "sound like a translation". (Some have said their English --in style, more than in vocabulary-- was influenced by the King James Bible, but I think they caught Homeric diction as well as a prose translation can catch it, and better than most metrical translations, too.

Stevensonʻs concept here was the reverse of the ban that one of my high school Latin textbooks imposed on "translation English". The book said: "DO NOT use "translation English." (Examples were: donʻt say "accordingly" for ʻitaque", nor "Conscript fathers" for "Patres conscripti"). Translation English, on the contrary, can be the best available rendering of certain non-English phrases, although there are extremes of it that should be avoided.

#29: rolandperkins,

How would you describe "Homeric diction"?

I like various translations of Homer (W.H.D.Rouse in prose, Fitzgerald, Fagles in verse), but somehow I just couldn't stand Lombardo's diction, though other people enjoyed it. I wonder whether it is simply a matter of personal taste, or there is a proper diction for a specific body of work.

To booksontrial (#30)

I agree that Fagles and Rouse are very good. I havenʻt done more than glance at Fitzgerald, and Iʻm hearing of Lombardo only since joining LT.

Itʻs hard to compare a prose diction, or even a modern metrical one in a meter that has little affinity to dactyllic hexameter, to Homerʻs metrical treatment. My idea of Homeric diction is impressionistic. I believe you might get the same impression from Rouse or Fitzgerald that I got from Lang/Leaf/Myers, and from Butcher, when I was high school age. As a classicist, by third year in college, I was supposed to be -- certainly not fluent in the original Homeric Greek -- but much more concerned with the original than with translations.

It may be a pedantic idiosyncracy with me, but I donʻt like Richmond Lattimoreʻs avoiding of the Homeric formulas, I suppose on the grounds that they are repetitions. Homer, and classical Greek poets in general, had no objections to repetition. Besides the mnemonic benefit, any phrasing worth giving once was, to their minds, worth giving twice or more. Professor Albert Lord, a classicist and Slavicist, believed that a requirement of ORAL (as opposed to llterary} epic was that it should have formulas.

Phrases in the Old Testament, in the Aeneid, and even in the Spanish El Cid epic (which Lord judged to be literary) show the same tendency, though to a lesser degree.

On your closing implied question: to my mind it is definitely "a matter of personal taste", and there is no "proper diction" for the epic. But there is a strong influence of tradition in all the post-Homeric epics. Some, like Vergil, retained the formulas; most, like the Latin Silver Age poets, did not.

_Iʻd be interested in looking into Lombardoʻs translation, if only because itʻs good to "know your enemy" ==taking your word for it that at least some will find it unbearable.

31: rolandperkins,

You brought up an interesting point about the formula. There lies the disadvantage for people like me who can't read the classics in the original language. We don't know whether the translator has followed the original formula. But, to me, that's not as important as capturing and transmitting the thoughts and emotions of the original effectively.

I assume that the traditional oral epic have gone through many years of development and refinement, as the tale was told and retold, and the formula it finally used must be perfectly, though not uniquely, fitted for the content, the language and the cultural background in which it was created. Therefore, for the translator, it is not necessary to maintain the original formula, as long as he can re-present the tale in a formula fitting for the target language and capture the essence of the original.