| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Things translators should not do Thread poster: Tom in London
|
|---|
| Do or do not, there is no "try" | Nov 7, 2022 |
Tom in London wrote: Ice Scream wrote:
So what is it translators should not do? Translate poetry or literary texts without consulting the authors
I don't see that the translator did anything wrong here. She consulted both the author and the original publisher, and appears to have dealt with them both in good faith.
Maybe the translation wasn't the best, in the original author's judgement, but it appears to have been an almost impossible translation task.
Also note that, according to the article, the original author "composed and rearranged the text using words sourced exclusively from the two-page legal case report of the insurance claim she tracked down in the University of Toronto’s law library." So who owns the copyright on that case report? Did the author obtain permission before reusing the material?
It all seems very murky, but the translator's only error seems to have been taking on a task she wasn't up to.
And maybe nobody would have been up to it. Based on my admittedly limited experience, I would say that translating poetry is by definition impossible: the best you can do is "localisation", i.e. taking a piece of creative writing and generating from it a new version in the target language that will fit in with the conventions of a different culture and be comprehensible to its people.
More specifically, the English translations of Greek poetry that I've seen - I mean "modern" Greek poets like Seferis or Elytis, not the ancient stuff - appear to make little or no attempt to emulate the rhythms and cadences of the original. Does that mean they're bad translations? Or just that to do that would be too difficult?
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 19:56
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| There were no [further] attempts at consultation | Nov 7, 2022 |
Thomas T. Frost wrote:
She did consult the author, who didn't seem to show any interest in the project...
I think the author showed just as much interest as any author would when they are contacted out of the blue by someone (who is not from a publisher) who wants to translate their work. She referred the translator to the publisher, which is what she should have done. This alone can't be regarded as "not showing any interest in the translation".
The publisher then decided not to involve the author in the process at all. The author assumed (rightly, in my opinion) that the publisher would contact her as soon as the translation project is confirmed. It is the publisher who claimed that they thought that the author was not interested... but do we believe them? Perhaps the publisher held the opinion that authors have no business being involved in a translation, and when the shit hit the fan, they came up with this excuse "we thought the author was not interested".
The translator explained later that she was under the impression that the publisher and the author were, in fact, in contact with each other, and she was a little disappointed that the author "chose" not to have any contact with her (not realizing that this was because the author was unaware of the entire thing). The translator did not contact the author on her own initiative because that is what translators do -- we don't contact the end-client (or the author of the text) directly unless our own client requests it.
[Edited at 2022-11-07 06:26 GMT]
| | | |
If a customer wrecked one of my translations and published it regardless of my objections with my name at the end, I wouldn't be best pleased, but chances are I too will have signed away any rights I may have had. So I do feel for the author. Without learning Italian I can't judge whether the translator did anything wrong. But I wouldn't put it down to race.
It does sound like the author doesn't understand how languages work though.
| | | | Tony Keily
Local time: 19:56
Italian to English
+ ...
| Not just a question of stories | Nov 9, 2022 |
I find the "Who ultimately owns the stories we tell?" blurb annoying.
There's been a recent tendency to reduce all literary writing to a question of 'experience' or of particular groups of people 'telling their stories', as if literary expression couldn't transcend an extended version of the back-to-school essay we'd all have to write after our summer holidays as schoolkids.
Last year marked the centenary of one of the greatest works in European literature, James Joyce... See more I find the "Who ultimately owns the stories we tell?" blurb annoying.
There's been a recent tendency to reduce all literary writing to a question of 'experience' or of particular groups of people 'telling their stories', as if literary expression couldn't transcend an extended version of the back-to-school essay we'd all have to write after our summer holidays as schoolkids.
Last year marked the centenary of one of the greatest works in European literature, James Joyce's Ulysses, a work that has no 'story' whatsoever, but expands its chapters from a (non-)plot consisting of a series of banal everyday episodes.
So it's actually a nice surprise to find an author complaining about the treatment of the formal aspect of her work. The visual patterns and kinetics created by the text on the page have been central to work of many poets in the last century or so, from Mallarmé and Ezra Pound on. If these aspects weren't carried over in the translation, I really don't think the Italian language can be blamed or that a translator can blame their ignorance on the absence of specific instructions.
And, legalities aside, a poet should always have the right to 'disown' a translated version of their work. ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
monica.m
Italy
Local time: 19:56
Member (2011)
German to Italian
+ ...
To be in awe of the text or author
If something doesn't match, it's not always a translator's fault.
Text or author may be not clear or make sense.
"Meaning is all and all is meaning".
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:56
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER | Very unsatisfactory Seamus Heaney | Nov 12, 2022 |
Beginning from the fact that Heaney's stanza breaks are ignored by the translator.
ITALIANO translated by Erminia Passannanti
Scavando
Tra il mio pollice e l’indice
sta la comoda penna, salda come una rivoltella.
Sotto la finestra, un suono chiaro e graffiante
all’affondare della vanga nel terreno ghiaioso:
è mio padre che scava. Guardo dabbasso
finché la sua schiena piegata tra le aiuole
non si china e si rialza co... See more Beginning from the fact that Heaney's stanza breaks are ignored by the translator.
ITALIANO translated by Erminia Passannanti
Scavando
Tra il mio pollice e l’indice
sta la comoda penna, salda come una rivoltella.
Sotto la finestra, un suono chiaro e graffiante
all’affondare della vanga nel terreno ghiaioso:
è mio padre che scava. Guardo dabbasso
finché la sua schiena piegata tra le aiuole
non si china e si rialza come vent’anni fa
ritmicamente tra i solchi di patate
dove andava scavando.
ENGLISH
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
[Edited at 2022-11-12 08:06 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Is it even doable in Italian? | Nov 14, 2022 |
I can appreciate the musicality of the English text, but I can't imagine how it can be simulated in Italian. It sounds choppy to me, how can you write something that choppy in Italian? I don't speak Italian but I sure know how it sounds. So, for me the only question would be if the translation is any good as a work of poetry, and that's something I can't tell because I don't speak Italian. I remember reading a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, and one of the most memorable parts of that expe... See more I can appreciate the musicality of the English text, but I can't imagine how it can be simulated in Italian. It sounds choppy to me, how can you write something that choppy in Italian? I don't speak Italian but I sure know how it sounds. So, for me the only question would be if the translation is any good as a work of poetry, and that's something I can't tell because I don't speak Italian. I remember reading a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, and one of the most memorable parts of that experience was the captivating rhythm of those tercets that kept me in awe from start to finish. I heard the same work recited in Italian, and it sounded very different. You can enjoy considerable freedom when translating into Russian because there is no fixed accentuation and the language itself is quite flexible, but a lot of poetry still gets translated in arbitrary ways. Everyone knows and loves Marshak's nursery rhymes that sound nothing like the English prototypes. On the other hand, Le Voyage by Baudelaire sounds a lot like the original except that the Russian translation by Marina Tsvetaeva gives you more goosebumps. I know, I know, I'm biased, but Marina Tsvetaeva was a genius if you ask me. The Iliad by Gnedich had me reading until there was nothing left to read, but when I went on to the Odyssey by Zhukovsky, I almost had to force myself to keep going. Translating poetry is an ungrateful task. Charles Johnson's Eugene Onegin is a work of great talent, but then it's also a showcase for how different English is from Russian. That's where I have to agree with Nabokov (btw, I haven't finished reading his translation in prose; even the first line, "My uncle [is] of most honest rules," had me thinking why in the world did he write that "[is]": all you can gather from the original text is "[being]") ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:56
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Tra il mio dito e il pollice la penna
si sdraia tozza, adagiata; come una pistola.
Quando la vanga affonda in un terreno ghiaioso
Un rumore netto, raspante sotto la mia finestra:
Mio padre, mentre scava. Io guardo in giù
Fino a che la sua groppa sforzante tra le aiuole
Si piega in basso, si alza a distanza di vent'anni
Chinando in ritmo attraverso le trivelle di patate
dove scavava.
| | |
|
|
|
Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 19:56
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Very surprising. | Nov 14, 2022 |
Ice Scream wrote:
It does sound like the author doesn't understand how languages work though.
Yes, we’ve never seen anything like that before.
| | | | | Pages in topic: < [1 2] | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Things translators should not do | Trados Business Manager Lite | Create customer quotes and invoices from within Trados Studio
Trados Business Manager Lite helps to simplify and speed up some of the daily tasks, such as invoicing and reporting, associated with running your freelance translation business.
More info » |
| | Anycount & Translation Office 3000 | Translation Office 3000
Translation Office 3000 is an advanced accounting tool for freelance translators and small agencies. TO3000 easily and seamlessly integrates with the business life of professional freelance translators.
More info » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
