Novel translation criticism - Blood-Drenched Beard 스레드 게시자: Alistair Gale
|
|---|
| | | Response link twice | Jun 2, 2014 |
You put the wrong link in for the review. The two links are identical, they are both for the response.
| | | |
So I have... My apologies for that.
You can get the link to the review in Alison's letter
| | | | |
|
|
|
Unfortunately the response by the translator appears to have been removed...
[Edited at 2014-06-03 00:59 GMT]
| | | | | Modern writing | Jun 3, 2014 |
As the response that prompted this thread has been taken down, I'm going to feel free to derail the thread.
This is a paragraph from the review that makes me think:
The protagonist (we will call him Nameless) suffers from a rare neurological condition, prosopagnosia (also known as face blindness), which – I discovered – Oliver Sacks has written about. The small number of people in the world who suffer from this condition cannot recognise faces; they cannot even recognise their own face in a photograph or a mirror. The condition can be congenital or it can develop with age. The connections between recognition and love, misunderstanding and intimacy are part of the intrigue which swathes the novel.
My initial feeling on reading something like this is that it's just terrible writing. A sentence with three parenthetical comments; a random name drop; failure to properly link the last sentence into the preceding ones; bad word choices: "intrigue which swathes". The writers I love best (I like Brit authors like McEwan and Ishiguro) would never write this way.
But I also wonder whether this kind of writing is just the modern way in English. I have read books which despite being full of "infelicities" like disjointed sentences and bad use of vocab nevertheless seemed to develop real narrative power. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just too snobby about prose and structure, and if I should relax and accept this kind of stuff. After all, when I'm translating an oddly-shaped Chinese paragraph, if I could just leave it all misshapen then things would be much easier.
Has anyone read anything by Cartwright? Is this style deliberate, and is it acceptable? One thing that translation has made me see is that the English sentence and the English paragraph are quite arbitrary, conventional structures, and they can be remade.
| | | |
Phil Hand wrote:
But I also wonder whether this kind of writing is just the modern way in English. I have read books which despite being full of "infelicities" like disjointed sentences and bad use of vocab nevertheless seemed to develop real narrative power.
It's just poor writing, plain and simple.
Re: this review, I am reminded of this passage from the Bible:
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
| | | | Ian Giles 
영국
Local time: 21:15
스웨덴어에서 영어
+ ...
| No such thing | Jun 3, 2014 |
No such thing as bad translation - only bad editing.
| | |
|
|
|
| | | Yes, absolutely. It seems like quite an illiterate review. | Jun 3, 2014 |
Phil Hand wrote:
As the response that prompted this thread has been taken down, I'm going to feel free to derail the thread.
This is a paragraph from the review that makes me think:
The protagonist (we will call him Nameless) suffers from a rare neurological condition, prosopagnosia (also known as face blindness), which – I discovered – Oliver Sacks has written about. The small number of people in the world who suffer from this condition cannot recognise faces; they cannot even recognise their own face in a photograph or a mirror. The condition can be congenital or it can develop with age. The connections between recognition and love, misunderstanding and intimacy are part of the intrigue which swathes the novel.
My initial feeling on reading something like this is that it's just terrible writing. A sentence with three parenthetical comments; a random name drop; failure to properly link the last sentence into the preceding ones; bad word choices: "intrigue which swathes". The writers I love best (I like Brit authors like McEwan and Ishiguro) would never write this way.
But I also wonder whether this kind of writing is just the modern way in English. I have read books which despite being full of "infelicities" like disjointed sentences and bad use of vocab nevertheless seemed to develop real narrative power. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just too snobby about prose and structure, and if I should relax and accept this kind of stuff. After all, when I'm translating an oddly-shaped Chinese paragraph, if I could just leave it all misshapen then things would be much easier.
Has anyone read anything by Cartwright? Is this style deliberate, and is it acceptable? One thing that translation has made me see is that the English sentence and the English paragraph are quite arbitrary, conventional structures, and they can be remade.
No serious literary critic can write in that type of language.
| | | | | A rant on bad terminology in translated novels | Sep 4, 2016 |
Dear colleagues,
I don't really want to start a new thread, and this was the closest one that seems suitable for a rant.
I'm reading a novel, Rene Denfeld's The Enchanted. I like it, but the problem is I'm reading its Hungarian translation (no idea why, I prefer reading the originals if I speak that language), which is flawed. The style is not that bad, but I can't get over the mistranslations that are obvious not only in comparison with the original, but simply because... See more Dear colleagues,
I don't really want to start a new thread, and this was the closest one that seems suitable for a rant.
I'm reading a novel, Rene Denfeld's The Enchanted. I like it, but the problem is I'm reading its Hungarian translation (no idea why, I prefer reading the originals if I speak that language), which is flawed. The style is not that bad, but I can't get over the mistranslations that are obvious not only in comparison with the original, but simply because they don't make sense.
For example, here's this term "medical release", a form the death row prisoner needs to sign for the death row investigator to be able to access his medical records. The Hungarian translator used a completely nonsensical term meaning "request for medical discharge" (as in: discharge from hospital), although the context makes it absolutely clear why this form was necessary. I looked it up in the original simply because the Hungarian made no sense, and sure enough, the original confirmed my suspicion.
To be on the safe side, I also checked another translation, the French one, as that's the only other foreign version of the book I could access that I might understand. Surprise, the French came up with an even worse term, given the context: "demande de transfert pour raison médicale". My French is very poor, but I'm quite sure that expression means "request for transfer for medical reasons".
Does a careless translation ruin your experience of a book, even though the book may actually be good?
Rant over ▲ Collapse
| | | | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Novel translation criticism - Blood-Drenched Beard | TM-Town |
|---|
Manage your TMs and Terms ... and boost your translation business
Are you ready for something fresh in the industry? TM-Town is a unique new site for you -- the freelance translator -- to store, manage and share translation memories (TMs) and glossaries...and potentially meet new clients on the basis of your prior work.
More info » |
| | LinguaCore |
|---|
AI Translation at Your Fingertips
The underlying LLM technology of LinguaCore offers AI translations of unprecedented quality. Quick and simple. Add a human linguistic review at the end for expert-level quality at a fraction of the cost and time.
More info » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
