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Flarne - EN
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January 10, 2025Due to the author's self-aggrandizing comments on Xitter, I was extremely curious about this book and whether it was like the 2nd-coming of Flaubert or Nabokov or something like that.
Unfortunately, it appears that us English speakers will never know whether Flarne is truly a stellar work of prose and a masterpiece announcing a new age of literature, or an artistic travesty, because the author has somehow got it in his head that he is as good a writer in English as he is in French, and has decided to translate his important magnum opus with his own hand, rather than hire a proficient literary translator to do the job. The end result is flawed, to say the least, and one just needs to look at the sample paragraphs available on Amazon to spot the glaringly obvious:
"The day has been long. Sarah felt herself in a sauna. She drew back the edges of her silky hair from the doormat and tried to cool down with any steep object near her vicinity. A plastic plate, a tabletop, but then she saw a sheet of paper which she then bent at a sharp angle around her fingers. She fanned her scorching face with it while nonchalantly stretching her head. Its multiple wafts of wind sprouted shivers within her being, and little by little, the sauna was turning into an autumn garden."
Mixed tense on the very first line of the novel does not do well to raise one's hopes up. But, giving Flarne the benefit of the doubt, perhaps one could consider this some newfangled literary technique, like the intentional mixed tense used in the novels of Jose Saramago to signify some distortion of time or perspective. And, clearly Flarne aims to be somewhat surreal in its poetics, with its extravagant metaphorical comparisons that sort of remind me of Kenzaburo Oe's works. Still, awkward syntactical constructions are littered throughout the text which casts doubt as to whether this is an intended effect or a plain lack of language skills.
Anyway here is a bunch of examples of suspect text that I spotted:
- 'Steep' which is usually collocated to tall objects like cliffs or hills, is applied to "a plastic plate, a tabletop, a sheet of paper".
- Descriptions which feel like they should be euphonious or, at least, flow better, sound stilted and ridiculous in English:
1. "She fanned her scorching face with it while nonchalantly stretching her head"
2. "the goofy smile peeking out from the left corner of his jaw"
3. "curiousity grabbed Sarah by the throat and urged her to squirm like a giraffe watching her surroundings"
4. "Despite her face being invisible, the alarming beats of her heart drove her to droop it still"
5. "His eyebrows were involuntarily furious..."
6. "Peter turned around, walked over to the doormat, stamping the ground with tap-dancing frequency."
7. "He almost meowed sweetheart"
8. "Sarah's eyelids - where sparkling false eyelashes were hanging elegantly - nodded at half height without ever finding fixity at the top"
9. "The petting tickles of the guitar"
10. "She put her hands over her forehead in an instinctive attempt to simmer down her nervous tension by raising her worn-out eyebrows"
11. "Peter's footsteps were slouching"
- "The CLOSED insignia" to refer to a closed sign.
- What the fuck is "their sweet awake rest"?
- What does 'chew' here even mean, chew toy? chewing sound? choo choo train? achoo?: "The flames generating their appearance seemed to whisper into Peter's ears like a chew which, over time, revealed the lightness of supple sound."
- Hyper redundant descriptions shift the style from poetic to purple: "the piercing sound of broken glass quivered like crashed cymbals in everyone's eardrums"
-Just plain cliched and overwrought constructions: "alarming beats of her heart", "his expression softened", "malicious grin", "adrenaline surging through nerves... madness and ecstasy", "angelic face...moment of pure haven"
- This sounds like dialogue no living or even fictional person would speak (so far the dialogue excerpts that have appeared sound samey in English): "Just a moment of inadvertence when I was wiping the fridge and my elbow inadvertently hit the-"
-The weird spatial incongruities of the prose. In the first three paragraphs, it is written as if Sarah is apparently lying on a doormat at the start ("leaning her elbow onto the doormat") but hits a frying pan and two plates after she "squirms like a giraffe", breaking them, which implies that she is now standing at eye-level. It is hard to tell whether these are purposeful incongruities to create a surreal atmosphere or an issue of flawed syntax because the descriptions here are too impressionistic to hang together properly. Kafka, this definitely isn't!
Now, to be fair to Flarne, I looked through the French version and the text definitely feels like it flows better (the first sentence is no longer mixed tense as 'fut' is past tense & the object Sarah is searching for is 'raide' which is apparently 'stiff' instead of 'steep' which makes way more sense), so I reckon it is mainly an issue of the author fancying himself to be as good of a bilingual writer as Nabokov. There's still a chance that Flarne could be the 2nd coming of literary Christ. I guess, if it's any consolation, the text is translated better than your average MTLed Chinese web novel. But for a work that boasts as being up to literary standards, this simply will not do. One doesn't expect every word to be le mot juste, but if you want people to spend money on your precious magnum opus, at least get every other word right! And if you're going to make a publishing house that advertises itself as a bilingual service for literary manuscripts, this is not the standard you should be producing in one of your target languages!
Despite all the above criticisms, I do hope that Flarne is actually a masterpiece, because I am always on the lookout for great books to read. Now if anyone here knows French and can confirm how it reads in its original language, would love to know how good it actually is.
Addendum: Here is a version of the text edited to get rid of its overwroughtness and some of the above incongruities, to provide a model of how an improved Flarne translation might potentially look in English. While this deviates too much from the original meaning to be considered a proper translation, if the OG French reads anywhere like this style, it probably fares better than the current English:
"The day had been long. Sarah felt herself in a sauna. She drew back her silky hair from the doormat, and, with a stiff sheet of paper she had found, bent at a sharp angle around her finger, fanned her scorching face. Sprouts of wind shivered her being. Little by little, the sauna became an autumn garden."
"Still leaning her elbow onto the doormat, her gaze wandered through the room, inadvertently stumbling onto something unusual. It was her Peter. He was talking to a customer, but his shoulders blocked her view. At the left corner of his jaw grew a smile. Its slight goofiness held her curiousity."
Unfortunately, it appears that us English speakers will never know whether Flarne is truly a stellar work of prose and a masterpiece announcing a new age of literature, or an artistic travesty, because the author has somehow got it in his head that he is as good a writer in English as he is in French, and has decided to translate his important magnum opus with his own hand, rather than hire a proficient literary translator to do the job. The end result is flawed, to say the least, and one just needs to look at the sample paragraphs available on Amazon to spot the glaringly obvious:
"The day has been long. Sarah felt herself in a sauna. She drew back the edges of her silky hair from the doormat and tried to cool down with any steep object near her vicinity. A plastic plate, a tabletop, but then she saw a sheet of paper which she then bent at a sharp angle around her fingers. She fanned her scorching face with it while nonchalantly stretching her head. Its multiple wafts of wind sprouted shivers within her being, and little by little, the sauna was turning into an autumn garden."
Mixed tense on the very first line of the novel does not do well to raise one's hopes up. But, giving Flarne the benefit of the doubt, perhaps one could consider this some newfangled literary technique, like the intentional mixed tense used in the novels of Jose Saramago to signify some distortion of time or perspective. And, clearly Flarne aims to be somewhat surreal in its poetics, with its extravagant metaphorical comparisons that sort of remind me of Kenzaburo Oe's works. Still, awkward syntactical constructions are littered throughout the text which casts doubt as to whether this is an intended effect or a plain lack of language skills.
Anyway here is a bunch of examples of suspect text that I spotted:
- 'Steep' which is usually collocated to tall objects like cliffs or hills, is applied to "a plastic plate, a tabletop, a sheet of paper".
- Descriptions which feel like they should be euphonious or, at least, flow better, sound stilted and ridiculous in English:
1. "She fanned her scorching face with it while nonchalantly stretching her head"
2. "the goofy smile peeking out from the left corner of his jaw"
3. "curiousity grabbed Sarah by the throat and urged her to squirm like a giraffe watching her surroundings"
4. "Despite her face being invisible, the alarming beats of her heart drove her to droop it still"
5. "His eyebrows were involuntarily furious..."
6. "Peter turned around, walked over to the doormat, stamping the ground with tap-dancing frequency."
7. "He almost meowed sweetheart"
8. "Sarah's eyelids - where sparkling false eyelashes were hanging elegantly - nodded at half height without ever finding fixity at the top"
9. "The petting tickles of the guitar"
10. "She put her hands over her forehead in an instinctive attempt to simmer down her nervous tension by raising her worn-out eyebrows"
11. "Peter's footsteps were slouching"
- "The CLOSED insignia" to refer to a closed sign.
- What the fuck is "their sweet awake rest"?
- What does 'chew' here even mean, chew toy? chewing sound? choo choo train? achoo?: "The flames generating their appearance seemed to whisper into Peter's ears like a chew which, over time, revealed the lightness of supple sound."
- Hyper redundant descriptions shift the style from poetic to purple: "the piercing sound of broken glass quivered like crashed cymbals in everyone's eardrums"
-Just plain cliched and overwrought constructions: "alarming beats of her heart", "his expression softened", "malicious grin", "adrenaline surging through nerves... madness and ecstasy", "angelic face...moment of pure haven"
- This sounds like dialogue no living or even fictional person would speak (so far the dialogue excerpts that have appeared sound samey in English): "Just a moment of inadvertence when I was wiping the fridge and my elbow inadvertently hit the-"
-The weird spatial incongruities of the prose. In the first three paragraphs, it is written as if Sarah is apparently lying on a doormat at the start ("leaning her elbow onto the doormat") but hits a frying pan and two plates after she "squirms like a giraffe", breaking them, which implies that she is now standing at eye-level. It is hard to tell whether these are purposeful incongruities to create a surreal atmosphere or an issue of flawed syntax because the descriptions here are too impressionistic to hang together properly. Kafka, this definitely isn't!
Now, to be fair to Flarne, I looked through the French version and the text definitely feels like it flows better (the first sentence is no longer mixed tense as 'fut' is past tense & the object Sarah is searching for is 'raide' which is apparently 'stiff' instead of 'steep' which makes way more sense), so I reckon it is mainly an issue of the author fancying himself to be as good of a bilingual writer as Nabokov. There's still a chance that Flarne could be the 2nd coming of literary Christ. I guess, if it's any consolation, the text is translated better than your average MTLed Chinese web novel. But for a work that boasts as being up to literary standards, this simply will not do. One doesn't expect every word to be le mot juste, but if you want people to spend money on your precious magnum opus, at least get every other word right! And if you're going to make a publishing house that advertises itself as a bilingual service for literary manuscripts, this is not the standard you should be producing in one of your target languages!
Despite all the above criticisms, I do hope that Flarne is actually a masterpiece, because I am always on the lookout for great books to read. Now if anyone here knows French and can confirm how it reads in its original language, would love to know how good it actually is.
Addendum: Here is a version of the text edited to get rid of its overwroughtness and some of the above incongruities, to provide a model of how an improved Flarne translation might potentially look in English. While this deviates too much from the original meaning to be considered a proper translation, if the OG French reads anywhere like this style, it probably fares better than the current English:
"The day had been long. Sarah felt herself in a sauna. She drew back her silky hair from the doormat, and, with a stiff sheet of paper she had found, bent at a sharp angle around her finger, fanned her scorching face. Sprouts of wind shivered her being. Little by little, the sauna became an autumn garden."
"Still leaning her elbow onto the doormat, her gaze wandered through the room, inadvertently stumbling onto something unusual. It was her Peter. He was talking to a customer, but his shoulders blocked her view. At the left corner of his jaw grew a smile. Its slight goofiness held her curiousity."
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