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Haha, this is actually what put me in mind to read it
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Apr 21, 2015 17:14
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IXIX posted:Pevear and Volokhonsky are considered nowadays to be the most accurate. Seconding this. Pevear has a fantastic essay at the end of their translation of "War and Peace." Basically, they argue that translation should try to be the closest to the author's original voice as possible. That might sound like an obvious answer, but the trend for translating literature for some time was "It should read in the modern vernacular." Which is absurd. Their translation might seem awkward at times but Russian doesn't translate well to English, and sometimes you just have to show that.
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Apr 21, 2015 17:50
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UnoriginalMind posted:Seconding this. Pevear has a fantastic essay at the end of their translation of "War and Peace." Basically, they argue that translation should try to be the closest to the author's original voice as possible. That might sound like an obvious answer, but the trend for translating literature for some time was "It should read in the modern vernacular." Which is absurd. Its a pretty legitimate debate though. Should translation reflect the vernacular of the writer and risk being difficult and hard to parse, or should it attempt to reflect the experience of the reader of the text in its native language? Both sides have good points.
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Apr 21, 2015 17:55
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Its a pretty legitimate debate though. Should translation reflect the vernacular of the writer and risk being difficult and hard to parse, or should it attempt to reflect the experience of the reader of the text in its native language? I have to prefer the former to the latter, though I see why the debate exists. Part of the enjoyment in reading literature in translation is the part where the book feels foreign. Some people don't like that difficulty, but that's what attracts me to it. That, and the voice of the author is less subjective than the experience of the reader, I think. Like, Constance Garnett's translations might have "reflected the experience of the reader" back when she translated them, but they sure as hell don't now. They sound Victorian. That's hardly fair of me though. No one's taken her translations seriously for a while now.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:04
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paint dry posted:I'm on kind of a Japan kick, and for that reason I started to read Kokoro today. Man this book is depressing There is even an anime adaption for you to watch, when you're finished.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:07
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Pulitzer announcement tomorrow vox day, obviously
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Apr 21, 2015 18:11
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corn in the bible posted:vox day, obviously what
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Apr 21, 2015 18:12
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UnoriginalMind posted:I have to prefer the former to the latter, though I see why the debate exists. Part of the enjoyment in reading literature in translation is the part where the book feels foreign. Some people don't like that difficulty, but that's what attracts me to it. So you want literature to accurately reflect the language it was written in but complain that Constance Garnett's translations of Victorian Russian novels sound Victorian?
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Apr 21, 2015 18:27
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CestMoi posted:So you want literature to accurately reflect the language it was written in but complain that Constance Garnett's translations of Victorian Russian novels sound Victorian? There was no "Victorian Era" in Russia. It's a period of British history. English and Russian novels from that time have distinct literary styles and structures, though they share similarities. EDIT: To clarify, what I should have said in that post was they they sound like Victorian English novels in her translations. Everything feels different in reading the book and coming from the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation it's eerie and off-putting. UnoriginalMind fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 18:32
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Idk, one of the very few problems I had with the P&V translation of Karamazov was that it read like a basically modern book. Books from the past do sound different, and while obviously writing like Dickens isn't the best way to represent the prose of Dostoevsky, I think it might be better than writing like a modern American author with occasional footnotes.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:46
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If we really want to get post-structuralist, there is even the argument that a translation cannot be considered a different form of a pre-existing text but rather a wholly unique text in itself.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:49
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CestMoi posted:Idk, one of the very few problems I had with the P&V translation of Karamazov was that it read like a basically modern book. Books from the past do sound different, and while obviously writing like Dickens isn't the best way to represent the prose of Dostoevsky, I think it might be better than writing like a modern American author with occasional footnotes. Totally understandable. I never thought of the word "modern" to describe the sensation of reading it, but you're not too far off from what I felt. Still, I liked that, despite the occasionally clunky feel. I'm a sucker for modern texts. Mel Mudkiper posted:If we really want to get post-structuralist, there is even the argument that a translation cannot be considered a different form of a pre-existing text but rather a wholly unique text in itself. oh god my brain
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Apr 21, 2015 18:51
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Mel Mudkiper posted:If we really want to get post-structuralist, there is even the argument that a translation cannot be considered a different form of a pre-existing text but rather a wholly unique text in itself. This is actually my approach to translations, but that's mostly because Pierre Menard is my favourite Borges story.
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Apr 21, 2015 19:07
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CestMoi posted:This is actually my approach to translations, but that's mostly because Pierre Menard is my favourite Borges story. Its mine too. In the end the question of a text's accuracy in comparison to another's is not quite as important as the text's inherent quality.
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Apr 21, 2015 19:14
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Mel Mudkiper posted:If we really want to get post-structuralist, there is even the argument that a translation cannot be considered a different form of a pre-existing text but rather a wholly unique text in itself. I thought that was generally accepted by scholars now, and really it makes a lot of sense (the Bible is a good example that can be used to easily explain the concept to people)
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Apr 21, 2015 19:22
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corn in the bible posted:I thought that was generally accepted by scholars now, and really it makes a lot of sense (the Bible is a good example that can be used to easily explain the concept to people) Like everything with academic criticism, there is a big gap between what scholars realize to be true and what laymen understand to be true. If I had a nickle for every time someone says "Subjectivity means literature is just your opinion" 
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Apr 21, 2015 20:11
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Like everything with academic criticism, there is a big gap between what scholars realize to be true and what laymen understand to be true. Death of the Author.
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Apr 21, 2015 20:12
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Smoking Crow posted:Death of the Author. Not sure why you're bringing it up. Death of the Author isn't so much about the reader being the sole arbiter of worth as much as its about authorial intent being irrelevant and discarding the concept of the text as a being a medium to express an author's position.
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Apr 21, 2015 20:17
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Not sure why you're bringing it up. Death of the Author isn't so much about the reader being the sole arbiter of worth as much as its about authorial intent being irrelevant and discarding the concept of the text as a being a medium to express an author's position. i'm just joshing you in the thread titled quit being a loving child and read some real literature
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Apr 21, 2015 20:18
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Smoking Crow posted:i'm just joshing you in the thread titled quit being a loving child and read some real literature Literary criticism chat turns me vaguely autistic
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Apr 21, 2015 20:22
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Goon favorite Douglas Hofstadter has quite a few essays on this subject. And yet they are mostly bad! What a world in which we live.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:32
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I've been meaning to get Ton Beau de Marot is it not good?
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Apr 21, 2015 21:40
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CestMoi posted:I've been meaning to get Ton Beau de Marot is it not good? I actually like Ton Beau de Marot, and I think about it a lot when I'm trying to do translation/language learning. That being said: It's deeply personal (although it's still more GEB than it is I Am A Strange Loop), but also a little disappointingly shallow. There are also long bits that drag if you've read any other works on translation, and some that just plain drag. For instance, one of the central conceits is presenting entire text of many [over 70] translations of Marot's A une Damoyselle Malade, including a number of his own iterations, which is sort of redundant and numbing after a while. For all of his eye to detail the structure of the book is also a little slapdash. Hofstadter also has that sort of stuck in amber quality that a lot of 70s and 80s academics have that's not quite intellectual conservatism but is still little annoying if you are trying to be au courant with the academic thinking about the subject. There's also a lot of form over function arguments that aren't very compelling (he thinks that not preserving rhyme schemes in translation is a bigger sin than not preserving word choice, and makes periodic digs at Nabokov for making fun of verse translations).
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Apr 21, 2015 22:14
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Tree Goat posted:Goon favorite Douglas Hofstadter has quite a few essays on this subject. And yet they are mostly bad! What a world in which we live. I thought you were talking about Richard Hoftstadter of the Paranoid Style in American Politics and I was surprised. I wonder if they're related.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:19
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An important note to my criticism is that I read it like 10 years ago and I was a little poo poo then and am probably still a little poo poo now.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:25
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UnoriginalMind posted:There was no "Victorian Era" in Russia. It's a period of British history. English and Russian novels from that time have distinct literary styles and structures, though they share similarities. You call translating into a modern vernacular "absurd", but then you praise P & V for utilising the modern vernacular so that the book doesn't feel alien to you. Brilliant. As for Garnett, her Chekhov is still widely acclaimed. Heralding P & V as the saviours of classic Russian lit in English is/was a pretty loving debatable en vogue thing. It's fine to just say that they're approachable and successful translations.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:25
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Ahh ok, I've got very little background in translation, other than learning languages and recently trying to translate some Rimbaud, just to get a feel for it, so seems like it'd be an okay book to start on? I'd love to read your recommendations for books on translation theory etc, as it's something I'm really interested in despite knowing nothing about it.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:27
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Mel Mudkiper posted:If I had a nickle for every time someone says "Subjectivity means literature is just your opinion" like one of my professors said: sure, a novel is open to a whole world of interpretations, but only a few of them will be valid.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:33
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Zaito posted:There is even an anime adaption for you to watch, when you're finished. Is it called My Neighbor Kokoro? im sorry
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Apr 21, 2015 22:36
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CestMoi posted:Ahh ok, I've got very little background in translation, other than learning languages and recently trying to translate some Rimbaud, just to get a feel for it, so seems like it'd be an okay book to start on? I'd love to read your recommendations for books on translation theory etc, as it's something I'm really interested in despite knowing nothing about it. I wouldn't think of it as a starter book, since it is somewhat divorced from the rest of the academy (it's more or less a polymath doing his own thing as opposed to like a summative work of scholarship, I guess). I'd say see if you have fun with it and then keep going based on that. I know Venuti gets read a lot, I think he published couple of collections of essays recently. I'm trying to remember some of the other things I've enjoyed (based on half-remembered college linguistics/philosophy of language courses). I remember an exercise that was based on the multiplicity of translations for the Tao Te Ching, (like this website has over a hundred: http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/tao-te-ching.htm) but unfortunately I can't find my notes anywhere. We read a lot of Adorno and Habermas and Derrida if that helps. Oh I did somewhat recently talk with the dudes who have been doing sort of historical analysis/critical theory stuff with sets of translations. Like the idea is you can look at linguistic shifts in well-translated works (in this example it's Othello: http://ivi.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/22/1473871613495845.full.pdf) and see really cool patterns.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:50
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Ras Het posted:You call translating into a modern vernacular "absurd", but then you praise P & V for utilising the modern vernacular so that the book doesn't feel alien to you. Brilliant. I guess modern isn't really the right word then. I don't really know what to call it. Their translations feel strange and don't sound like a typical English writer's voice, which I like. And that makes them difficult to understand/finish sometimes. But, as someone who mostly reads modern literature, mostly 1900s onward American lit in particular, these books weren't hard to finish. Does that make more sense? I realize that came off as weird, upon rereading. Also, I had no idea Garnett was still considered good. My professors back in college always talked about how awful she was and to avoid her like the plague. All apologies. UnoriginalMind fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 22:54
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ulvir posted:like one of my professors said: sure, a novel is open to a whole world of interpretations, but only a few of them will be valid. I just wish those people would realize how vast and fascinating the topic of subjective interaction with a text is. Its not "I say its good and that's my opinion and you cannot argue with it." It's "Here's how you as a conscious being interact with a text through the impossibly complex net of social, cultural and political influences that make up your own unique subject positioning"
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Apr 21, 2015 23:03
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I just wish those people would realize how vast and fascinating the topic of subjective interaction with a text is. Its not "I say its good and that's my opinion and you cannot argue with it." It's "Here's how you as a conscious being interact with a text through the impossibly complex net of social, cultural and political influences that make up your own unique subject positioning" not to mention your previous experience with other texts as well.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:06
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Mel Mudkiper posted:"Here's how you as a conscious being interact with a text through the impossibly complex net of social, cultural and political influences that make up your own unique subject positioning" That's a brilliant way of putting it. Sometimes a person's interpretation of a text reveals more about themselves than the text itself. Is that ACADEMICALLY SOUND well I don't know but it sure is one of the best things about reading.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:12
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ulvir posted:not to mention your previous experience with other texts as well. God subjectivity is cool A good example of subjectivity in fiction is when I first read Metamorphosis by Kafka. By grandmother had just died after like a year of slowly decaying in her health and being a huge disgusting burden on the whole family. We still loved her and wanted her to live, but it was exhausting and viscerally unpleasant. I ended up sympathizing with the family and identifying with their relief when Gregor dies and a year or so later in a class the professor was like "no they are supposed to be terrible people." UnoriginalMind posted:That's a brilliant way of putting it. Sometimes a person's interpretation of a text reveals more about themselves than the text itself. Is that ACADEMICALLY SOUND well I don't know but it sure is one of the best things about reading. Its very academically sound. Subjectivity in literary terms basically means the influence the reader brings onto a text. The biggest misconception about reading is that its a monologue from author to reader. Its really more of a dialog between reader and text.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:12
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UnoriginalMind posted:it sure is one of the best things about reading. actually the best thing about reading is finding out who the murderer is before the detective states who the murderer is.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:13
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Tree Goat posted:actually the best thing about reading is finding out who the murderer is before the detective states who the murderer is. This is why Chesterton is the best because it's always easy to guess (it's the atheist)
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Apr 21, 2015 23:17
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Mel Mudkiper posted:God subjectivity is cool And it's really fun when the author knows it too and reading a book becomes a little game between you and some dead person who's also cleverer than you.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:17
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Tree Goat posted:actually the best thing about reading is finding out who the murderer is before the detective states who the murderer is. I like Columbo because it's the opposite
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Apr 22, 2015 00:37
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Columbo is not a book and there has not been a novelisation, as far as I know.l
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Apr 22, 2015 00:42
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