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kate_nepveuI have done three panels and one meetup-hosting so far at Readercon and I'm having a great time. I am also sleepy, so I am going to try and clean up the tweets of the most recent panel I live-blogged on the theory that this takes relatively little brain.
Translation and Embedded Assumptions
Anatoly Belilovsky, John Chu, Neil Clarke, Pablo Defendini, Tamara Vardomskaya (mod)
In an interview with Fran Wilde, Emily Wilson described the effect of embedded cultural assumptions in translating The Odyssey—not only the assumptions in the original Greek, but the assumptions that past English translators have imposed on the text. Panelists will discuss how translators can and should approach these challenges.
(I proposed this panel and so I had to go, even though it meant going to the mall, eating a fast food lunch, running to find batteries for my Bluetooth keyboard, and running back—drenched in sweat—in about an hour. And it was great and I was very happy.)
So I missed most of the introductions; everyone but Neil is a translator.
People seem to be introducing themselves with examples of very difficult translations. Anatoly has example of one-word Russian (sign?) that only makes sense in visual context of image.
ladysciencenerd helps me out: "Cartoon. It's a cartoon of someone painting palm trees to look like birches, with a caption that translates to "Nostalgia.""
Anatoly has other example that boils down to slang. Audience refers back to Pablo story (while I was setting up) where discovered that in Cuba, "papaya" doesn't refer to fruit but to vagina . . . by asking friend's mother for the papaya. Anatoly last example (which was unclear to me if own translation or not), which I believe had to do with how different audiences interpreted actions: English readers thought the character was speeding suicidally, but Russian readers understood character to just be in a great big hurry.
Neil: is publishing translations without being able to read original, has to count on team of people. So a lot of these granular issues settled before comes to, but not always. It's interesting when there's an American in the translated story . . . who is not always that American. They try to get the spirit of story across, so often work extra with the translators on that situation. Has edited bilingual anthology of Chinese SF, two volumes published in China, not been able to get published in U.S.
Tamara: gives example from Ada Palmer, in whose books gender is outlawed: everyone uses "they" (except narrator) to signal that progressive viewpoint has won. Polish translator said, in Polish that's the conservative position, the progressive is to give high visibility to female existence (e.g., "waitress and waiter", not "server"). Ada went with political connotation rather than word-for-word.
Tamara: question for panel: sometimes as translator, have to make least bad choice, in examples gave before, what do think translator was trying?
John: had previously used some example with "devil" in the title. Initial (?) Chinese translation was not wrong and was identifiable, but missed so many implicit meanings. Helped out with another translator, they eventually went to classical Chinese--"when in doubt"--substituting bunch of American cultural assumptions with Chinese ditto.
Tamara asks Pablo about tradeoffs in word choice. Pablo: Upcoming story in FIRESIDE, basic premise of consortium of angels having discussion, has two sections prefaced by dates but with different year-numbering terms. Translated first as Year of Our Lord and second as A.D., to try and convey difference in intent between.
Anatoly: words get in the way of the fiction. Paraphrase Ken Liu, translation is retelling the story for new audience. Betray all the words you want as long as story comes across. (Example I didn't follow about Liu translating a story involving filial duty.)
Neil: not a fan of footnotes, will have discussion about ways to minimize/avoid. Omit if clear from context. Most complicated translation published was an alternate history, needed footnotes there.
John: re footnotes, has done translations where deviated from text because of necessary historical context and wasn't allowed to use footnotes because editor didn't want (to Neil: wasn't you). Fortunately as writer has lot of experience in inline incluing. Not "literal" by artificial standard, but understandable.
Anatoly: translated story about political implications of grammar, in Russian they say "in Poland, in Germany," but "on Ukraine, on an island." So one character says "the Ukraine" and Ukrainian character corrects them by saying "Ukraine."
Tamara: next question: puns. (laughter) What do you do?
John: shake fist at author. Hard. Can always punt but have to come up with equivalent. I back-translated Ken Liu's translation of Three-Body Problem to see if it made sense, so I know where all the bodies are buried. At one point someone tells story with a pun that only works in particular dialect. English story only same in outline, words don't line up, basically Ken telling different story with same point & completely different pun. Jaw-dropping, breaktaking, completely invisible work.
(note: I remembered the English translation of The Cyberiad which is FULL of wordplay; I think there may be a point in which a story relied on a lot of things having the same starting letter, and maybe the translator had to pick a completely different letter?)
Pablo: lot of this is regional. In places that are still colonies of US, get infusion of English, new idioms, and the existence of English in those idioms has connotations that a literal translation misses. Uses example of a curse that incorporates "fucking" but would be wrong written that way, would be better rendered phonetically.
Anatoly: story title that meant both "Without A Name" and "The Imp of the Name or Title," which was translated into "Untilted" (un-tilt-ed).
Someone: keep an eye on copy-editor then!
Neil: don't tend to do a lot of stories with puns.
Tamara: read Penguin Classics (? I think) translation of Don Quixote which contained a triple pun, and had an end note saying "this is complicated."
John: webpage on translations of wordplay in Harry Potter. Anagrammed name; Chinese version just punts, literally never would happen that "I am" shows up in someone's name. Forgets what did now. Read Taiwanese translation of "cupboard beneath stairs", translator thought mean USian sense, kitchen cabinet. Or, sherbet lemon, which is lemon drop to USian, translator thought meant lemon sherbet (I think this means, as in sorbet, the frozen treat).
(I think the webpage John's referring to is probably this one, found via Wikipedia.)
Tamara: how to handle use of a third language, or an intrusion of the language-to-be-translated-into?
John: "Water that Falls", which has untranslated Chinese, was translated into Chinese. Learn a lot about cultural assumptions of translator by what footnote, e.g, fraternities. In the story, everyone speaks in their native language, so that effect is lost when translating whole thing into Chinese. In 1950s, 1970s Chinese gov't simplified characters, first attempt took and second did not; if in China everything is in simplified script, but if in Taiwan, for instance, where was born, everything in traditional. All Chinese text he wrote was rendered in simplified, footnoted with traditional script that he wrote that is semantically identical.
Tamara: would have made sense to me, narrator is alienated from parents. (I'm not sure I got the meaning of this correctly.)
John: thing is, read that and don't get code switching, because if had originally written in Chinese would have written differently.
Anatoly: In Russian, do a transliteration of a transliteration. So English word "hamburger" intrudes in, how character says is rendered phonetically. Tells story of translator who didn't know what that was, someone said "raincoat"; five minutes later, translator walked back in and said "my character just ate the raincoat."
Tamara: question about fictional translations in far-future stuff etc., what can we use to signal assumptions (I think).
John: flip the question, in The Big Sleep, Chandler refers to "automatic elevator" every time except once, because default was still "person-operated elevator," so thinks must be something like that.
Audience: glad brought up puns & politics, translates lot of Yiddish songs for family members, sometimes have to give both translations because can't convey both meanings at once.
Greer Gilman: some mad Italian published translation of MOONWISE, and whole thing is sea of footnotes saying "I can't do this."
Audience: husband jokes "must read Shakespeare in original Russian," in order to preserve spirit (well-regarded) translator had to alter so much. Has heard that especially difficult to translate Tolkien into Russian because the Rohirrim rely a lot on differences in their speech.
Tamara: in Russian translation of Romeo & Juliet, bawdy lines left out
John: often the same in Chinese translations, not sure of reason
Audience to John: re: the story with Devil in the title, what alternatives did you consider?
John: best can say is, for a language with no prepositions, there is a surprisingly rich way to arrange two nouns.
And that was time!
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Date: 2019-07-14 10:43 am (UTC)Thanks for writing that up!
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Date: 2019-07-16 02:09 am (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2019-07-15 10:52 am (UTC)Re: Thank you!
Date: 2019-07-15 10:53 am (UTC)Re: Thank you!
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