Aw, Nanci
Purchasers of novels published by Toronto’s House of Anansi Press will no longer know if the books they buy are translated or not.
…
According to House of Anansi editor Martha Sharpe, this is more or less correct. “It’s an acknowledgment that it’s hard to get a readership to embrace a book that’s translated. The more we talked to readers and booksellers the more we realized that [translation] is a strike against the book in the marketplace.”
– From the Globe & Mail
(Grumpy thanks to Derek Weiler for this.)
And… Michael Hayward has a nice piece on translation from the reader’s perspective, quoting Edwin Morgan’s take on Mayakovksy’s “brogue:”
Horse-cluifs clantert
griein their patter:
crippity
crappity
croupity
crunt.
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Comment
- Some of the best translations have been into Scots: Gavin Douglas’s Aeneid and Hugh MacDiarmid’s brilliant versions of Russian poetry in his “Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” (http://www.yfinnie.demon.co.uk/contents4/thistle1.html) spring to mind. Here’s the start of the latter’s version of Blok’s “Neznakomka” (“The Unknown Woman”: http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/texts/unknown.html):
At darknin hings abune the howff
A weet and wild and eisenin air.
Spring’s spirit wi its waesome sough
Rules owre the drucken stramash there
And heich abune the vennel’s pokiness,
Whaur aa the white-weshed cottons lie,
The Inn’s sign blinters in the mochiness,
And lood and shrill the bairnies cry….
— language hat Jun 4, 1:48pm # - Is it better to sell a translation than to have the translator’s name on the book? Jury’s out here.
— Moi Jun 4, 6:24pm # - Why must they be mutually exclusive?
— gail Jun 5, 6:20am # - How… er… bizarre. Is the underlying expectation here that REALLY we should all become multi-lingual and read the deathless prose in its creator’s original language?
As someone who struggled for many years to read Tolstoy, I can testify to the fact that the translator is as important as the author, and his or her work is a delicate art. Granted, I can’t offhand remember the name of the person who finally opened up War and Peace for me… but I can look it up, if the fancy strikes me to find more Tolstoy.
— Compass Jun 5, 9:57am # - I don’t know about expectations but I think, quite simply, the overriding conclusion is that marketing goals prime above all, and publishers are convinced that readers are not curious about foreign perspectives (except in easily digested soundbytes).
Maybe they’re right.
I find this conclusion a lot easier to accept grudgingly from, say, Coca Cola, than I do from putative bearers of “culture,” operating in the communications industry.
I recognize that I’m outrageously idealstic on this score, but it’s yet another step backwards, and particularly egregious amidst all this hokum about globalization and multiculturalism.
Yeesh, even ghostwriters get more press.
— gail Jun 5, 10:55am # - Well, readers will no longer know that the book was translated unless they look at the title page… I’m amused by the translator who claims that “The translator is a known quantity, while the author may not be.” Oooh, I’ll read anything translated by Fischman, he’s so ginchy…
— J Jun 5, 10:42pm # - Uh… it’s not about a grab for fame, it’s about proper recognition.
Although, I could bring up the example of William Weaver.
— gail Jun 6, 5:08am # - I think this is a new facette of the northern american ignorance. But it is so cynic, that it must be canadian… more than USA.
they treat translated books like family cripples, where everybody is ashamed of, but everybody pretends not to be bothered…
Americans, learn to understand that the world is bigger, greater and more colourful than your narrow horizon!
— Connie Jun 8, 5:47pm # - It’s the same all over the English-speaking world. If it’s English, it must be better than if it’s Hindi. So there’s no point in translating the Hindi. Sickening, ain’t it?
— Moi Jun 9, 7:12pm #
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