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Re: new 20K

From: <ralf.tauchmann~at~t-online.de>
Date: 11 Oct 2005 08:19 GMT
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

"Walter J Miller" <wjm2~at~nyu.edu> schrieb:
> Sorry, Ron.  Your third paragraph (especially) is full of non-sequiturs
> and adds up to sheer bullshit.

> > I discovered that while Mercier was an incompetent translator, he
> > was also an extraordinarily ! lazy one. There was an advantage to
> > this: he made no attempt to superimpose his own voice onto
> > Verne's. The result is that his version conveys, I think, very
> > accurately Verne's style of writing. In other words, the Lewis
> > Mercier translation---for all of its myriad faults---reads very
> > much like what Verne would have produced had he written the book
> > in English.

Dear Walter, dear Ron, dear all,

My impression of the quoted paragraph was a bit similar, I say "a bit",
because my (inner) reaction was far from being that harsh. But it may be
interesting to point out, that "translation" is a "cluster notion" to
describe the result or the status of the activity rather than the
process, which is a mix of what I would call translation (in the
stricter sense: the rather small "word by word" portion), pragmatic
adaptation (to the language standards, to make it fluent, generally
the largest portion), "social" adaptation (to the audience) and
imitation or let's say invention (= rendering the notional and
associative links between the words).

So if you say, Ron, "would have produced had he written the book
in English", you enter into a discussion started by translation
critics like Schleiermacher around 1800 who said (approximately)
"the goal to translate how the author would have originally written
is a work of high spirits and lecherousness". On that basis, the
Hamburger language professor, Mrs. Juliane House, more recently developed
a "guide" for translation critics by distinghuishing "overt translation"
(ensuring cultural transfer) from "covert translation" (adaptation
to the target audience with cultural substitution and thus without
cultural transfer). I do not agree with this simplified view (which
is nevertheless more complex than can be seen from the quotation).

I dare say that good translation (in the wider sense and as the
result of the process) -- if good translations actually exist --
is a mix of both.

And, what is more important, Juliane House's system implies the
existence of a "word by word" translation... and that is not possible.

So for 20K, how do you translate, how can you translate, the first
sentence of the Chapter called "Une perle de dix millions" where
Jules Verne makes an associative link between "requin" (shark) and
"requiem" according to the principle known as "popular etymology" ?
Apart from annotations (which I would NOT include in the translation
process at all, but consider a publisher issue), the only way would
be to "invent" another popular etymology (= imitation, here: of style).

> > There have, of course, been far more scholarly translations
> > published since, but none, I think, that makes any effort to
> > preserve Verne's writing style---the cadence of his sentences, for
> > instance.

That's a very interesting item and unfortunately, I do not know
any of the English translations, but the "cadence of a sentence"
is a rather tricky thing. A group of French translators recently
retranslated Sigmund Freud with the aim to reproduce the train of
thoughts, i.e. to develop ideas in the same way by sticking to what
is called "theme-rheme" structure. But the order of words in
a sentence is different from language to language and although
the Freud attempt may be an interesting "étude", I am doubtful
as to the "pleasure of reading" (French sentences tend to place
nuances in the end of a sentence, German sentences tend to
emphasise the end and place nuances in front).

> > There is certainly justification for modernizing the
> > language of the book---but in some ways this is like modernizing,
> > say, Mark Twain or H.G. Wells or Dickens. These are Victorian
> > novels and part of the fun of reading them, I th ink, is the
> > language in which they are told.

Yes, that's the point. Translation is impossible. The original is
unique and will last for ever (I mean for so long as someone will
read it). Translations are copies and will remain copies. In the
publishing trade, I heard people say that a translation is usually
for approximately 10 years (I think they chiefly refer to public domain
works). Translations tend to become out of date much quicker than
originals. That implies that no translation can ever claim to be
the best or only one...

Sorry for the long message and I've certainly just scratched the
surface...

Kind regards,

Ralf Tauchmann
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mailto:ralf.tauchmann~at~t-online.de
tel: +49-351-8336141 fax: -8336142
http://www.ratau.de ; http://tauchmann.ratau.de
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Received on Tue 11 Oct 2005 - 10:20:42 IST

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