{"id":7037,"date":"2007-09-17T13:01:03","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T17:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7037"},"modified":"2022-10-13T10:12:19","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T14:12:19","slug":"lost-in-translation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7037","title":{"rendered":"Literature Lost in Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fascinating and disturbing article<\/a> about the mangled translation of Jules Verne’s work. (And check out the comments, too – the bit about Hans Christian Andersen really sparked my curiosity – I would love to read the original!!) Translation has always been an interest of mine – how languages correspond, the troubles of finding a perfect match – but also to retain the feel of the work itself. For example, I came across this amazing<\/i> article about translating James Joyce’s Ulysses<\/i> into Chinese<\/a> – written by the translator Jim Di. How to maintain the glorious sweep of that last “line” in Chinese? Watch how he worked it out. More evidence that translation is, actually, an art. I read Chekhov for years – since high school – in what I see now as a very stilted translation. I loved it – I loved Chekhov – but I found it VERY difficult to play, without sounding like a parody of “Chekhovian” language. It was a surface rendering of the language. It did not get inside the Russian – and try to translate the tone, and the energy – to MY ears. When I started branching out, recently, to try other translations (most notably Paul Schmidt’s – I wrote about that here<\/a>) – I felt this prickling of excitement. It was the same thing, obviously … “I am in mourning for my life”, etc. … but it was made new. The prose lived – rather than sitting on the page, as some monument to a long-dead dusty relic. I think it’s about time Jules Verne was re-issued in a new translation. He deserves that, most definitely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating and disturbing article about the mangled translation of Jules Verne’s work. (And check out the comments, too – the bit about Hans Christian Andersen really sparked my curiosity – I would love to read the original!!) Translation has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28,9],"tags":[194,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7037"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181056,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7037\/revisions\/181056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}