For anyone who's thinking they'd like the challenge of translating fiction Thread poster: Tom in London
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:53
Member (2008)
Italian to English
"How would you translate “Women? Godahm, mahn!”? Three words, so many unsayable things going on. Moments like these make themselves felt slowly when I’m translating a book. The ramifications, the impossibility, the horror of the subject matter all take their time to surface. One heavy word after another — and I have to turn it all into prose. Prose is when it flows, but when words like these jump out at you it feels absurd that you have to make sentences of the onslaught, of the over... See more "How would you translate “Women? Godahm, mahn!”? Three words, so many unsayable things going on. Moments like these make themselves felt slowly when I’m translating a book. The ramifications, the impossibility, the horror of the subject matter all take their time to surface. One heavy word after another — and I have to turn it all into prose. Prose is when it flows, but when words like these jump out at you it feels absurd that you have to make sentences of the onslaught, of the overstimulation flooding your brain — and that you have to do it all in a different language. "
Francesco Pacifico describes - in excruciating detail, in a very interesting (and disturbing) long essay, what it was like translating Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" from English into Italian - including the challenges of being Italian and white when translating an Author who is American and black, specifically Ralph Ellison ("When invisibility is Ellison’s central metaphor for Blackness, can a European translator of his work afford to stay invisible?")
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-41/essays/lautore-invisible/
[Edited at 2023-01-31 08:28 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Tom in London wrote:
"How would you translate “Women? Godahm, mahn!”? Three words, so many unsayable things going on. Moments like these make themselves felt slowly when I’m translating a book. The ramifications, the impossibility, the horror of the subject matter all take their time to surface. One heavy word after another — and I have to turn it all into prose. Prose is when it flows, but when words like these jump out at you it feels absurd that you have to make sentences of the onslaught, of the overstimulation flooding your brain — and that you have to do it all in a different language. "
Is he overthinking this, or am I underthinking it? I can't see that anything would be lost by very simply translating this into British English as "Women, eh?".
I get the general point (because it's kinda self-evident) but it seems an odd example.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:53
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Ice Scream wrote: Tom in London wrote:
"How would you translate “Women? Godahm, mahn!”? Three words, so many unsayable things going on. Moments like these make themselves felt slowly when I’m translating a book. The ramifications, the impossibility, the horror of the subject matter all take their time to surface. One heavy word after another — and I have to turn it all into prose. Prose is when it flows, but when words like these jump out at you it feels absurd that you have to make sentences of the onslaught, of the overstimulation flooding your brain — and that you have to do it all in a different language. "
Is he overthinking this, or am I underthinking it? I can't see that anything would be lost by very simply translating this into British English as "Women, eh?". I get the general point (because it's kinda self-evident) but it seems an odd example.
Read the article. I was only giving an example. Better still, read the book.
| | | | Tony Keily
Local time: 21:53
Italian to English
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| Part and parcel of literary translation | Feb 1, 2023 |
In Barcelona, back in the 1990s, I gave the thumbs up to a publisher to translate and put out James Kelman's A Disaffection. Kelman used phonetic transcription of Glaswegian English long before Irvine Welsh.
A good pal of mine, the recently deceased José Manuel Álvarez Flórez (https://vasoscomunicantes.ace-traductores.org/2022/05/02/12299/) gamely took on ... See more In Barcelona, back in the 1990s, I gave the thumbs up to a publisher to translate and put out James Kelman's A Disaffection. Kelman used phonetic transcription of Glaswegian English long before Irvine Welsh.
A good pal of mine, the recently deceased José Manuel Álvarez Flórez (https://vasoscomunicantes.ace-traductores.org/2022/05/02/12299/) gamely took on the translation job. I asked him about the approach he'd take and he said he'd just create a slang dialect in Spanish and run with it. After all, José had translated a number of William Burroughs novels, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, An Táin, dumptrucks full of Kerouac and Brautigan, Chester Himes... So I think these problems would have seemed to be just 'gajes del oficio'.
But I will have a look at the article to see if maybe I'm missing something here. ▲ Collapse
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Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 21:53
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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| Challenge and peanuts | Feb 1, 2023 |
I am not interested in challenges paid with peanuts.
| | | | Edward Potter
Spain
Local time: 21:53
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
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| Finnegans Wake anyone? | Feb 4, 2023 |
I actually had a professor in a translation course I took who translated a couple of chapters.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:53
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Edward Potter wrote:
I actually had a professor in a translation course I took who translated a couple of chapters.
Joyce himself wrote a few bits in Italian and published them in the magazine "Prospettive"
| | | | Edward Potter
Spain
Local time: 21:53
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Joyce himself wrote a few bits in Italian and published them in the magazine "Prospettive"
Amazing. I imagine he did it with tongue in cheek. The novel, of course, is untranslatable.
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:53
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:53
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER | worderful wondplay | Feb 4, 2023 |
Apparently in later life Joyce had an annoying habit of indulging in wordplay during normal conversation.
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 22:53
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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| There are challenges yet | Feb 7, 2023 |
Here a paragraph from Wikipedia:
"Reluctantly (I really have tried) I have been driven to conclude that Alastalon salissa is untranslatable, except perhaps by a fanatical Volter Kilpi enthusiast who is prepared to devote a lifetime to it. To mention only one of the difficulties, there is no English equivalent to the style of the Finnish ‘proverbs’ (real or imaginary) with which the main character Alastalo’s thoughts are so thickly larded. Add to this the richness and, yes, eccentrici... See more Here a paragraph from Wikipedia:
"Reluctantly (I really have tried) I have been driven to conclude that Alastalon salissa is untranslatable, except perhaps by a fanatical Volter Kilpi enthusiast who is prepared to devote a lifetime to it. To mention only one of the difficulties, there is no English equivalent to the style of the Finnish ‘proverbs’ (real or imaginary) with which the main character Alastalo’s thoughts are so thickly larded. Add to this the richness and, yes, eccentricity, of Kilpi’s vocabulary, and the unfamiliarity of much of the subject-matter, centred as it is on the interests of a sea-going community that hardly exists any longer, even on the islands, and you have a text that is full of pitfalls for the translator. As for the humour, I’m sorry to say that it depends so much on the idiom and presentation that it doesn’t come over at all. If I did any more, I’m afraid it would just have to be a laborious paraphrase, and I don’t think I’m capable of making it effective, or even readable, in English." ▲ Collapse
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