Jimmy’s Comments (group member since Jul 02, 2010)

Jimmy’s comments from the Loosed in Translation group.

Mend the Living (aka The Heart) by Maylis de Kerangal has a character that is a translator

62: A Model Kit by Cortazar, the main character Juan is an interpreter.

The protagonist of Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli is a translator also... or maybe she's an interpreter since she's not translating anything in written form, but that probably counts too.

Cool! Thanks for posting this, Caroline

Cool list! Nice to see it all together.

Welcome Tonymess!

Thanks Stephanie! This looks interesting

Very interesting. Thanks for the perspective, Robert!

I enjoyed your article. I wonder if badly translated book titles reflect badly translated book contents. Because the title is usually tied with marketing, and so I wonder if the title was translated well at first, but then the publisher decided to change it to something more catchy (or that they deem more catchy) to a certain audience.

Of the examples you chose to highlight, I think the Power of Now was the worst. What a laughable and wrong-headed translation.

Thanks for sharing!

Cool! Thanks for posting

Cool! Thanks for posting. I'll have to check those translations out.

Cool! Thanks for the link, Greg

Cool, thanks for posting this!

:)

Found out about this thanks to Nate D. posting over in the Buried Books group:

House on Moon Lake by Francesca Duranti (1987) concerns an obsessed Italian translator chasing a forgotten Austrian novel.

A very interesting podcast episode dealing with issues of translation: http://www.radiolab.org/story/transla...

I especially enjoyed the 'Seeing in Tongues' segment

Translation by Kamran Talattof and Jocelyn Sharlet:

This translation was strangely veiled, like it was trying not to say things straight out. this made it much harder to understand. the rhythm of the sentences was shorter than the other translation. No footnotes. Introduction by Kamran Talatof: one of the most rubbish introductions to a book I've ever read. Including synopsis of entire plot. It reads like a high school book report plagiarised from wikipedia, including some details of the author's life and works, some very obvious interpretations of this book.

Excerpt:

Mahdokht's heart stopped. The girl, Fatemeh, at fifteen like a worldly woman, was at hte end of the greenhouse with Yadallah, the gardener. With his bald head and oozing eyes, it was difficult to look at him.

The world around her went dark, and her legs began to tremble. She involuntarily clutched the edge of a table. But she could not take her eyes off them. She looked and looked until they saw her. The guy had begun to whimper. He wanted to escape but he couldn't He was mindlessly beating the girl. The girl extended her hand toward Mahdokht. Mahdokht ran out of the greenhouse. She didn't know what to do. She headed for the pool in a daze, and wanted to throw up. She washed her hands and sat on the bench.

"What can I do?"

Translation by Faridoun Farrokh:

This translation was more straight forward. There were footnotes. Foreword by the filmmaker Shirin Neshat. Afterword by the author explaining where she got inspiration for each one of the characters.

Excerpt:

Her heart missed a beat. The servant girl, Fati, fifteen years old, but more resembling a streetwalker, lay at the far end of the greenhouse with Yadollah, the gardener, with a bald head and repulsive, red-rimmed eyes, panting, panting, panting.

Mahdokht, near collapse and reaching for a shelf to steady herself, could not take her eyes off the scene. The man was the first to notice her. He let out a squeal and tried to disentangle himself from the embrace of the girl by hitting her in the face with one hand and reaching with the other for Mahdokht, who rushed out of the greenhouse and wandered aimlessly in the courtyard, fraught with nausea. She hurried to the pool, dipped her hands in the water, washing them compulsively. She then sat on the edge of the bedstead.

"What shall I do?"

Yes, I knew that, sorta... I was just trying to point out that readers are all different... there is no one ideal reader and you can't please them all. So the term reader-oriented seems flawed to me, and sounds kinda like a lowest-common-denominator strategy.

James wrote: "he translates for the reader primarily"

For which reader?

Thanks Caroline!