Subject
Re: Translation (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com>
re:
> From: Peter Kartsev <petr@glas.apc.org>
> > What a pity, then, that no brave soul has volunteered to produce the
> > exact, literal, ugly, and unreadable _podstrochnik_ (literal translation)
> > of Shakespeare in Russian, akin to Nabokov's _podstrochnik_ of Pushkin!
> > Surely, *this* is what we've been missing all along, choked by the
> > unbearably rhyming sonnets as rendered by Marshak, or unbearably
> > metrical and flowing Hamlet as rendered by Lozinsky or Pasternak!
> > All the educated Russians will flock to that ugly literal edition of
> > Shakespeare at once and will start comparing it to the treacherous
> > and dishonest previous translations with many a happy chuckle. We'll
> > even sacrifice the treacherous (and fortunately scarce) non-literal
> > translations of Shakespeare by Nabokov.
> >
> > What Pushkin actually wrote is a novel in verse, *in Russian*. The only
> > way to know what he wrote is to read it, *in Russian*. To believe that
> > *any* translation, "literal" or otherwise, could reproduce the work
> > in a very different language really faithfully, is silly and naive. To
> > dismiss poetic translations for being unable to do that is to attack a
> > strawman. To claim that a literal translation faithfully reproduces
> > a work of poetry (as opposed to a housing contract) is to betray
> > astonishing naiveness.
> >
> > Anatoly Vorobey
> >
>
> Mr. Vorobey, I believe that educated Russians are currently flocking to
> read Sorokin and Pelevin, which goes a long way towards making their
> flocking habits largely irrelevant.
Oh, I'm not much interested in flocking habits of those who are currently
flocking to read Sorokin and Pelevin. And I dare suspect that not all
educated Russians are of that variety, even though I'm probably much less
informed in this respect than you are.
> Marshak's translations are excellent
> on their own, and his Burns may well be better than Burns' Burns.
Sure thing, but they're still _translations_. Even though Marshak's
translation of _Comin' Through the Rye_, which is much better know in
Russian than the original is in English, is anything but literal, it
is an excellent translation. Rajt-Kovaleva's translations of Kafka
are sometimes said to be better than the original Kafka (that is a
but of an exaggeration, I suspect) and I believe Garcia Marquez
publicly praised Gregory Rabassa's translation of _One Hundred Years
of Solitude_ as being better than his own original work. However well
all of them "stand on their own", they're still translations -
and it is such examples, rather than Nabokov's EO, that exemplify the
best in the practice of translation.
> Pasternak's Shakespeare, however, is pitiful.
I always preferred Lozinsky's, but probably wouldn't go as far as "pitiful".
> I was never so silly or naive as to claim that a literal translation
> faithfully reproduces anything. Perhaps you should have read my words more
> carefully.
What you said is that reading Nabokov's VN is the only chance, for a
foreign reader, to actually read what Pushkin wrote. This suggests
that VN's translation faithfully reproduces in English "what Pushkin
wrote", and is clearly false and absurd, except if you choose to interpret
"what Pushkin wrote" in the most convoluted and perverse of senses,
concentrating on lexical meaning only in a work of poetry. This is why
I suggested that a literal _podstrochnik_ of Shakespeare would, according
to this opinion of yours, be preferrable as being the only chance for
Russian readers to read "what Shakespeare wrote". Clear absurdity of this
suggestion may or may not clarify my opinion to you.
> And I dismiss poetic translations not so much for being
> unfaithful to the original, but rather for being presumptuous.
Could you elaborate on the difference between the two in this context?
(my dictionary defines "presumptuous" as "overstepping due bounds;
taking liberties").
Yes, Arndt's version contains numerous howlers, but
is infinitely closer to the original than Nabokov's translation of "Alice
in Wonderland" into Russian. That translation is as presumptuous as they get,
and yet it's a delightful one. Marshak's renditions of Burns are, again,
very presumptuous, but you contend they may be better than Burns' Burns.
Presumptuousness may be the problem in the ridiculous new film version
of "Eugene Onegin", but surely not in Arndt's translation - Arndt does
everything he can to be faithful to the original (in the real, poetic,
including *both* form and content, rather than lexical, meaning of the
phrase), he just fails. Perhaps then it's not the presumptuousness that
is the problem, but rather the failure to produce a convincing, artistic,
flowing, beautiful, yet as complex as the original, version of _Eugene
Onegin_ in English. Admittedly, all existing English translations fall
far short of this ideal. But dismissing them all as equally worthless
is nevertheless wrong; they are very different in quality, and there
is a clear trend, in recent translations, towards fewer howlers, better
language, better understanding of the nuances, and so on.
There is no good version of "Paradise Lost" in Russian; and there is no
really good version of "The Divine Comedy" in Russian that I know of,
either. But surely this doesn't mean that all existing translations are
to be shunned, condemned and laughed at! If one looks at successive
translations of "The Divine Comedy" in Russian, a general trend towards
improvement is undeniable. There will never be an ideal version; but I'll
settle for one which is as good as Marshak's Shakespeare or Demurova's
Carroll.
There had been enough awful
howlers in Russian translation, some of them much more basic than those
of the _EO_ translators (e.g. Lermontov, translating, from English,
"kind" as "a child", confusing with the German word). And yet some of
these translations are remembered and admired. Yes, all current English
translations of _EO_ are bad; but the best of them show, perhaps only in
few places, perhaps rarely, but do show to the reader some distant
glimpses of the joy and delight that reading Onegin in the original
version is to Russians. Nabokov's version never does that.
> When
> Nabokov translates Tyutchev, the authorship of the resulting gem is a
> matter for argument; but when Arndt or another non-entity translates
> "Onegin", it is ludicrous to ascribe the result to Pushkin.
Incidentally, the relatively recent James Falen's Onegin is probably the
best among the existing translations. Do try to read it if you haven't.
> Incidentally, if you agree that a poetic translation is by definition
> unfaithful to the original, then what, exactly, is its purpose?
To try and recreate, in the target language, as faithfully as possible,
with faithfullness understood in terms of both form and content as
a dynamic unity, the original work.
Oh, and by the way, has Vikram Seth's _The Golden Gate_ - an attempt
to create an original American poem in Pushkin's stanza - been
discussed in this forum?
--
Anatoly Vorobey,
mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton
re:
> From: Peter Kartsev <petr@glas.apc.org>
> > What a pity, then, that no brave soul has volunteered to produce the
> > exact, literal, ugly, and unreadable _podstrochnik_ (literal translation)
> > of Shakespeare in Russian, akin to Nabokov's _podstrochnik_ of Pushkin!
> > Surely, *this* is what we've been missing all along, choked by the
> > unbearably rhyming sonnets as rendered by Marshak, or unbearably
> > metrical and flowing Hamlet as rendered by Lozinsky or Pasternak!
> > All the educated Russians will flock to that ugly literal edition of
> > Shakespeare at once and will start comparing it to the treacherous
> > and dishonest previous translations with many a happy chuckle. We'll
> > even sacrifice the treacherous (and fortunately scarce) non-literal
> > translations of Shakespeare by Nabokov.
> >
> > What Pushkin actually wrote is a novel in verse, *in Russian*. The only
> > way to know what he wrote is to read it, *in Russian*. To believe that
> > *any* translation, "literal" or otherwise, could reproduce the work
> > in a very different language really faithfully, is silly and naive. To
> > dismiss poetic translations for being unable to do that is to attack a
> > strawman. To claim that a literal translation faithfully reproduces
> > a work of poetry (as opposed to a housing contract) is to betray
> > astonishing naiveness.
> >
> > Anatoly Vorobey
> >
>
> Mr. Vorobey, I believe that educated Russians are currently flocking to
> read Sorokin and Pelevin, which goes a long way towards making their
> flocking habits largely irrelevant.
Oh, I'm not much interested in flocking habits of those who are currently
flocking to read Sorokin and Pelevin. And I dare suspect that not all
educated Russians are of that variety, even though I'm probably much less
informed in this respect than you are.
> Marshak's translations are excellent
> on their own, and his Burns may well be better than Burns' Burns.
Sure thing, but they're still _translations_. Even though Marshak's
translation of _Comin' Through the Rye_, which is much better know in
Russian than the original is in English, is anything but literal, it
is an excellent translation. Rajt-Kovaleva's translations of Kafka
are sometimes said to be better than the original Kafka (that is a
but of an exaggeration, I suspect) and I believe Garcia Marquez
publicly praised Gregory Rabassa's translation of _One Hundred Years
of Solitude_ as being better than his own original work. However well
all of them "stand on their own", they're still translations -
and it is such examples, rather than Nabokov's EO, that exemplify the
best in the practice of translation.
> Pasternak's Shakespeare, however, is pitiful.
I always preferred Lozinsky's, but probably wouldn't go as far as "pitiful".
> I was never so silly or naive as to claim that a literal translation
> faithfully reproduces anything. Perhaps you should have read my words more
> carefully.
What you said is that reading Nabokov's VN is the only chance, for a
foreign reader, to actually read what Pushkin wrote. This suggests
that VN's translation faithfully reproduces in English "what Pushkin
wrote", and is clearly false and absurd, except if you choose to interpret
"what Pushkin wrote" in the most convoluted and perverse of senses,
concentrating on lexical meaning only in a work of poetry. This is why
I suggested that a literal _podstrochnik_ of Shakespeare would, according
to this opinion of yours, be preferrable as being the only chance for
Russian readers to read "what Shakespeare wrote". Clear absurdity of this
suggestion may or may not clarify my opinion to you.
> And I dismiss poetic translations not so much for being
> unfaithful to the original, but rather for being presumptuous.
Could you elaborate on the difference between the two in this context?
(my dictionary defines "presumptuous" as "overstepping due bounds;
taking liberties").
Yes, Arndt's version contains numerous howlers, but
is infinitely closer to the original than Nabokov's translation of "Alice
in Wonderland" into Russian. That translation is as presumptuous as they get,
and yet it's a delightful one. Marshak's renditions of Burns are, again,
very presumptuous, but you contend they may be better than Burns' Burns.
Presumptuousness may be the problem in the ridiculous new film version
of "Eugene Onegin", but surely not in Arndt's translation - Arndt does
everything he can to be faithful to the original (in the real, poetic,
including *both* form and content, rather than lexical, meaning of the
phrase), he just fails. Perhaps then it's not the presumptuousness that
is the problem, but rather the failure to produce a convincing, artistic,
flowing, beautiful, yet as complex as the original, version of _Eugene
Onegin_ in English. Admittedly, all existing English translations fall
far short of this ideal. But dismissing them all as equally worthless
is nevertheless wrong; they are very different in quality, and there
is a clear trend, in recent translations, towards fewer howlers, better
language, better understanding of the nuances, and so on.
There is no good version of "Paradise Lost" in Russian; and there is no
really good version of "The Divine Comedy" in Russian that I know of,
either. But surely this doesn't mean that all existing translations are
to be shunned, condemned and laughed at! If one looks at successive
translations of "The Divine Comedy" in Russian, a general trend towards
improvement is undeniable. There will never be an ideal version; but I'll
settle for one which is as good as Marshak's Shakespeare or Demurova's
Carroll.
There had been enough awful
howlers in Russian translation, some of them much more basic than those
of the _EO_ translators (e.g. Lermontov, translating, from English,
"kind" as "a child", confusing with the German word). And yet some of
these translations are remembered and admired. Yes, all current English
translations of _EO_ are bad; but the best of them show, perhaps only in
few places, perhaps rarely, but do show to the reader some distant
glimpses of the joy and delight that reading Onegin in the original
version is to Russians. Nabokov's version never does that.
> When
> Nabokov translates Tyutchev, the authorship of the resulting gem is a
> matter for argument; but when Arndt or another non-entity translates
> "Onegin", it is ludicrous to ascribe the result to Pushkin.
Incidentally, the relatively recent James Falen's Onegin is probably the
best among the existing translations. Do try to read it if you haven't.
> Incidentally, if you agree that a poetic translation is by definition
> unfaithful to the original, then what, exactly, is its purpose?
To try and recreate, in the target language, as faithfully as possible,
with faithfullness understood in terms of both form and content as
a dynamic unity, the original work.
Oh, and by the way, has Vikram Seth's _The Golden Gate_ - an attempt
to create an original American poem in Pushkin's stanza - been
discussed in this forum?
--
Anatoly Vorobey,
mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton