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Seth

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The Door

by Magda Szabó

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Seth said: " My 1-star rating pertains to the 2005 / 2015 Len Rix translation only!

I personally prefer the original translation by Draughon.

Here are the first few sentences in the Rix translation:

"I seldom dream. When I do, I wake with a start, bathed in sweat. T My 1-star rating pertains to the 2005 / 2015 Len Rix translation only!

I personally prefer the original translation by Draughon.

Here are the first few sentences in the Rix translation:

"I seldom dream. When I do, I wake with a start, bathed in sweat. Then I lie back, waiting for my frantic heart to slow, and reflect on the overwhelming power of a night's spell. As a child and young woman, I had no dreams, either good or bad, but in old age I am confronted repeatedly with horrors from my past, all the more dismaying because compressed and compacted, and more terrible than anything I have lived through. In fact nothing has ever happened to me of the kind that now drags me screaming from my sleep.

My dreams are always the same, down to the finest detail, a vision that returns again and again. In this never-changing dream I am standing in our entrance hall at the foot of the stairs, facing the steel frame and reinforced shatterproof window of the outer door, and I am struggling to turn the lock."

Same passage from the Draughon translation:

"I rarely dream. But when I do, I wake up bathed in sweat. Then I lie back down again and wait till my heart quiets down, and I brood over the invincible, magical power of night. As a child or in my youth, I had neither good dreams nor bad; but time after time my old age lines up compressed balls of pain for me from its stockpile, which are so disquieting because they're more dense, more tragic than anything I could ever have lived through; in fact, not once has anything happened to me like what wakes me, screaming in the night.

My dreams are recurrent visions, identical to a hair; I always dream exactly the same thing. I'm standing in our entryway at the bottom of the stairwell, on the inner side of the street door's iron-rimmed, wire-reinforced, unbreakable glass window, and I try to unlock the door."

I simply do not like the first version. It sounds like someone took every stylistic element and sanitized it out of existence. Metaphors? "Identical to a hair"? Apparently Rix thinks that is too challenging for the average reader? The fact that the glass is wire-reinforced- that somehow needs to be removed from the text? And the main character doesn't rarely dream but seldom dreams. Ok, so like, only 4% of nights. Not 3% or (gasp) 1%, wouldn't want to freak us out or anything.

I dunno, maybe Draughon added stuff that was never there (I don't speak Hungarian so I cannot confirm or deny), but if the Rix translation actually captures what Szabo meant to say and the Draughon translation doesn't, then I'll just read Draughon's works instead of Szabo's. ...more "

Nov 15, 2023 03:32PM · see review