Crossing the Language Border - What To Carry
January 20th, 2010
Ennui and schadenfreude are what linguists would call loan words. We English speakers pinched them from the French and the Germans respectively because they are just too good not to use.
Tolstoy described ennui as a ‘desire for desires’. As a word it carries much more glamour than the approximate word in English – bored. The woman was too bored to do anything, versus the woman on the couch was filled with ennui. The latter sentence has a story somewhere, a touch of decadence, a hint of wistfulness and a jaded, over sophisticated glamour to it. The former sentence speaks of one who lacks motivation, imagination and perhaps has uncouth personal habits.
And schadenfreude – pleasure in others misfortune. Another word stuffed with shades and nuance. The Wikipedia article on schadenfreude mentions the Latin equivalent – delectatio morosa or in English, ‘morose delectation’. As a phrase it doesn’t quite have the same flavour, although it’s quite delightful in itself. Apparently it was a sin in the medieval church to ‘dwell with delectation on evil thoughts,’ but I imagine that didn’t stop people.
As they say, so much is lost in translation. Nothing is more irritating than watching a French or German film using subtitles with a companion who is a fluent speaker of either language – they sit next to you, snorting and tittering, then lean over and tell you the subtitles are only rudimentary and the subtleties cannot be conveyed without knowing the language.
I’ve been dwelling on thoughts of translation at the moment. I’m reading a book by a French writer and although I don’t know for sure, I think much has been skewed by the translation. It doesn’t read well in areas and I can only assume that the translation is at fault. But the translator, as noted on the book, is an academic and prize winning translator. So what is going wrong? Either I’m being too picky, or too generous to the writer. Some of the scenes involve the characters using dialect, colloquialisms and slang. The translator appears to have used American and sometimes British colloquial speech to stand for French and it just doesn’t work – for me anyway.
The book is not literature and I doubt learned scholars will debate the author’s meaning for years at a time. In today’s publishing climate I’d imagine the publishing house that bought the rights would offer the translation job to various experts and the result accepted as good enough. Or would another editor go over the translation - one who spoke both English and French and suggest alternatives? It could become lengthy and expensive if that were the case.
I recently listened to a radio program about two translators, an older couple - husband and wife - one French, one Russian, who live in Paris and are currently working on a new translation of War and Peace. The woman noted it was not uncommon for them to debate the meaning of a word all afternoon. How glorious. I could hear the slow tick of a wooden clock, see old couches and a sun dappled floor, the busy streets of Paris outside, the cacophony of mobile phones echoing everywhere, and these two, with perhaps coffee and a small glass of cognac beside them, deep in thought and conversation about a word. Now this is the sort of treatment War and Peace deserves. French thrillers probably get translators with serious work habits, less poetic natures and a liking for instant coffee.
Random House in Germany has bought the Book of Love’s translation rights. What they come up with will no doubt be a good translation. But I wouldn’t be able to tell, because I don’t speak German. I’m not too worried about it, I’ll simply assume that the translator gets it right and the book, with my name on it, makes sense to the readers.
This year, for various reasons and simply for the challenge, I am attempting to learn French, with the aim, eventually, of being able to read French novels. The idea of such an effort of mind being put toward a seemingly trivial pursuit appeals to me enormously.
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
“The great novel of the Napoleon excursion into Russia is brought to all its glory by the veteran translators who have been methodically slashing their way through the Russian classics. Their deft work with both Russian and French (Russian nobility spoke primarily French) is a remarkable feat. When I asked my editor, the worldly wonderful Beena Kamlani at Penguin, whether I should read this, she replied, “It will make you glad to have been alive in order to be able to read this.”
Robb Spillman, TinHouse Publishing Blog
Related posts
Categories: on reading, on writing | Tags: publishing, reading, research, translation, writing
1 Comment
for a good feed ...
how lovely it would be to spend all day thinking about words - in all their nuanced and historical glory. I enjoyed these musings.