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March 29, 2005
Problems of translation
I am working on a study of two translations of Natalya Baranskaya's Nedelya Kak Nedelya. This is a very amateurish study, and the text is a simple one. All the same, I am getting a feel for some of the difficulties which must recurringly haunt the Russian-English translator.
For example, whenever the main character talks about her two children or their belongings, she makes use of the Russian language's very flexible diminutising functions: regulated suffixes which can make of any noun, or even certain adjectives, a smaller, cuter (or more trivial) form of itself. And so all episodes involving Olya's children are recounted in a tender, but not at all jarring, form of light baby-talk. English has its diminutising suffixes, too, but none as institutionalised as in Russian. The challenge to the translator, then, is to somehow retain the tenderness, without resorting to awkward overuse (or any use at all, ideally) of our -let, or -kin suffixes.
On a rather higher level:
The Servile Path - Translating Vladimir Nabokov. Quite long, but very worth the read: one-third translation insights, one-third account of the rise and fall of a largely epistolary relationship, one-third self-aggrandising (but very entertaining) portrait of the author as a translator. Too quotable for me to bother quoting very much (what to select?!) but I will say that in this passage I am very disappointed with Vera Nabokov (and feel quite vindicated by the author, Michael Scammell):
'Later we got into another altercation over Tolstoy--not the name but the name of one of his works. I had written to say that my dissertation was to be a structural analysis of Anna Karenina. "Anna Karenin (not Karenina, please!)," replied Vera. I knew what she meant. The "a" is merely the feminine form of "Karenin" that logically shouldn't exist in English. But again I dug in my heels. "Of course you are right, strictly speaking, but ... Anna came into English literature and into my life as Karenina, and Karenina she will remain." I then (mimicking Nabokov) scanned the two names and innocently added that to use "Karenin" would be "like translating a Pushkin line accurately and completely destroying the rhythm." Little did I realize the aptness of that lighthearted comment.'
[Clever, clever!]
Finally, from a study of how translators with different target languages have dealt with JRR Tolkien:
On "Gentlehobbit" -
"Although 'gentleman' is well enough accepted in Russian to have its own dictionary article (dzhentl'men) and some derivatives with Russian word formation elements (dzhentl'menstvo - gentlemenliness), only one of the Russian translators (Gruzberg) was daring enough to use it to recreate Tolkien's neologism, producing (dzhentl'khobbit) The same is true of Dutch, where the second translator (Mensink-van Warmelo) simply imported gentlehobbit, apparently considering it recognizable enough in Dutch, where gentleman is also an entry in the standard Dutch defining dictionary. In German, the first translator (Carroux) created a very readable neologism of her own: Edelhobbit, which is transparent as an analog of the German word for noblewoman (Edelfrau). The second German translator (Krege) took it out. The first Dutch translator (Schuchart) likewise made a readable neologism, combining hobbit with the Dutch word for gentleman (heer), to form Hobbitheer. The Czech and the two Polish translators all avoided gentlehobbit."
Posted by michele at March 29, 2005 3:04 PM