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Posted by Mary Ann Caws (she/her) on August 25, 2020 at 12:37 pmhello dear friends,
this beginning of our reading group, just to amuse you. A letter in the London Review of Books on Aug. 13 points out that “unlike their Francophone counterparts, English speakers are taught to repeat the same word endlessly rather than employ synonyms.” And then the letter-author continues that in the field of translation studies, “it is a commonplace that good English doesn’t mind and often prefers repetition, while good French prefers and often insists on synonyms – a habit sometimes referred to in English (not always in a positive way) as ‘elegant variation’.”
This is fascinating to me, since I was comparing French translations of Henry James to the original, in which the same word recurred many times over deliberately (“I know that he knows that you know”, etc.) would become (“Je vois que tu sais qu’il aperçoit”) and so on. So the letter writer, a professional translator, found himself replacing French. synonyms with English repetitions tin order to create good English style.”
Fun, right?
MAC
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Totally terrific. Wunderbar. Fantastico!
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 12:38 PM Mary Ann Caws (Poets Together!) <
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>As a commited practitioner of elegant variation myself, I was surprised by the LRB letter-writer’s statement that “it is a commonplace that good English doesn’t mind and often prefers repetition” and decided to do some research, beginning with the history of the phrase, which apparently goes back to Fowler’s The King’s English.
Among Fowler’s examples – and presumably an exception that proves the rule – is this from Vanity Fair:
“At the sixth round, there were almost as many fellows shouting out ‘Go it, Figs’, as there were youths exclaiming ‘Go it, Cuff’.”
Curious how this was handled in French, I found the following in Guiffrey’s 1884 translation (authorized by Thackeray, if not reviewed by him):
“Au sixième tour, les voix se partageaient à peu près pour crier: «Courage, Figs! courage, Cuff! »”
Satisfactory, I guess, but pretty thin in comparison with the English. Since Thackeray’s sentence already – and with some relish – avoids repetition, I’m left wondering what motivates the compression of the French. Perhaps the play on “les voix” – as both “voices” and “votes”?
can’t get into zoom today to practice! should I just try on monday? my group is at 4:30 monday
best, mary ann caws
Mary Ann Caws
Some stray thoughts on Edie Grossman, “Why Translation Matters” and
Virginia Woolf. Grossman states that the purpose of a translator is ‘to
re-create as far as possible, within the alien system of a second language,
all the characteristics, vagaries, quirks, and stylistic peculiarities of
the work we are translating.” My past work on the correspondence between an
Anglophone Chinese writer, Ling Shuhua and Virginia Woolf, reveals that
Ling, struggling to translate her Chinese stories into English (her second
language), sent chapters of her autobiography to Woolf over the period of a
year and a half (Ling was an intimate friend of Julian Bell when he was in
Wuhan, China, 1935-1937, and they translated some of her stories together).
First, Ling writes to Woolf making a charming comparison between cooking
with foreign implements and writing/translating in a second language:I know there is very little chance for me to write a good book in English
for the tool I use to do my work in something which I can not handle well.
It is true in cooking too, if one uses a foreign pin [foreign pan] or stove
to cook a Chinese dish, it won’t come out the same as the original. It
often loses some good taste. In writing I don’t know how far it counts.
When I read a good translation, I feel a relief at once…Dear Virginia, I
want you to tell me what shall I do since I am in a state of nervous
tension. Oh, yet, how I hope you would be as kind as before to tell me to
try it, don’t despair [sic]. (12.31.38)Woolf appraised Shuhua’s chapters, noting “a charm in the unlikeness. I
find the similes strange and poetical” (Monk’s House, 10.15.38). Woolf
valued the “foreignness” in her style, and urged her “to keep the Chinese
flavor” (2.28.39).Please go on; write freely. Do not mind how directly your translate the
Chinese into the English. In fact I would advise you to come as close to
the Chinese both in style and meaning as you can. Give as many natural
details of the life of the house, of the furniture as you like. And always
do it as if you were writing Chinese. (Monk’s House 10.15.38)Woolf encouraged Shuhua to “think” and write in Chinese, then translate
into English. She dismissed Shuhua’s worry about English grammar, and told
her to resist the common practice of putting her work into formal English
prose. She countered that if the manuscript were, to some extent, “made
easy grammatically by someone English I think it might be possible to keep
the Chinese flavour and make it both understandable and yet strange for the
English” (10.15.38). Woolf valued the “strangeness” of the writing—like
Grossman–working with Shuhua to preserve it (with Julian Bell’s
assistance).Visual translation: After reading Shuhua’s autobiography, Vanessa Bell also
wrote, how “charming” it was, particularly the fact “that life in a Chinese
household is described by an artist.” “How splendid to be able to both
paint and write,” she remarks as she looked over the sketches to be
included in Ling’s 1953 autobiography, *Ancient Melodies*. Shuhua herself
aspired to write something “true of culture, of things in themselves.”
Issues of self-translation, couples translating together, visual and verbal
translation surface here.–Also, Grossman’s comment about “translators” being “writers.” In a review
of Ferrante’s new novel, the reviewer comments on the translator’s
“modesty” in not wanting to be considered the writer of the novels.Pat Laurence
From Patricia Brody
“Hello Poets Together
Please scroll down to see LARB link
where Marilyn Hacker and another poet
are writing Renga in Englishhere is a linked “ crown of renga” ( if you will) from poet translator
Marilyn Hacker.
Marilyn wanted especially to share this translator art with Mary AnnCaws!
Thank you Patricia B.
———- Forwarded message ———From: Marilyn Hacker <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 10:33 AM
Subject: Renga
https://lareviewofbooks.org/<wbr />article/renga-spring-2020/
Random thoughts.
Intrigued last week by seeing Monet’s mystical Gare St. Lazare, the Semaphores, and the signs in it that do and don’t signify: the elusive, blank, round railroad signs; the fog of impressionism; the sound of a train in the scene. I think of how the signs–visual images (do we see the back or the front?)–are blank, open, anything, any directions, any languages can be written upon them. And each would be different. Reminding me of Saussure: the relation between the sign and the signifier not fixed across time and language. And yet if one of the signs is red that may be fixed? Or does red not signal across cultures? I think of the train whistle that you can almost hear in the scene as an auditory semaphore that signals an approaching or nearby train. Does this sound travel across time and language? I think of two semaphore’s in Bowen’s novel, The Heat of the Day: the servant, Matchett, puts Portia on a train to the seaside, and “waved several times after it in a mystic semaphore, her fabric gloved hand”; Louie, the working class girl whose husband is away in the war is described as signalling “unmarriedness” in the semaphore of the click of her heels on a lonely street; high heels today still a signal.
?totally agree, may we all see this today? exactly where we want to be!
Mary Ann Caws
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