"Zivkovic has that gift of effortless prose that envelops you as it drives daggers into your perception of the world." —The Agony Column
This was just one excerpt of praise for Zivkovic I read on Amazon while searching for one of his books to suggest for Short Stuff. May I defer and say that though his writing is clear and straightforward, I thought it lacked a certain elegance I had expected? Don't get me wrong -- I think he's an exceptional storyteller. I just found some of the writing -- especially the dialogue -- a little out of tune at times. I wonder whether this is a matter of the translation. Any thoughts?
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Yeah, I know what you mean, and I had the same thought about how the translation process affected the tone of the story. There's also sort of a dreamlike vagueness to everything (a mist?!) that could maybe account for things seeming kind of out of tune or "off."
ReplyDeleteWas the original in Serbian, I presume? It's so odd to think of literature being written in languages that only a relatively small percentage of people can understand. I mean, if you're writing in Serbian and wish to be read by a large audience, you just live with the fact that most of your readers will be experiencing you in a language you didn't write in. They won't be reading your words. Some beautifully poetic thing you said in Serbian could just be lost. (Or maybe something that sounds sort of mundane in Serbian is really beautiful in English or Chinese!)
I just read an article about Chinua Achebe, who has a new book of essays out. I guess some considered it controversial that he, a Nigerian man, wrote "Things Fall Apart" not in his tribal language but in English, the "language of the oppressor." He says he did it because about 200 languages are spoken in Nigeria and that the only way to reach a wide audience was to write in English. So we get to read what most people says is the greatest African novel in our own language. In Achebe's own words. Get this, though: he now, as an old man, is translating "Things Fall Apart" back into his native tongue, Igbo — the language from which the story came. I just find that amazing.
Another amazing thing I find about translations is how we have to depend on the skill of the translator. With some works, like the classics of world literature, there are multiple English translations to choose from. There's an article in the recent New Yorker about a new translation of "The Canterbury Tales" from Chaucer's Middle English. And I think some side-by-side comparisons show it to be rather awful and dry (and Chaucer's fun bawdiness gets rendered as charmless nastiness), but at least with someone like Chaucer we have options. With contemporary authors, like Zivkovic, we really don't.
Sorry, that has little to do with your original question. I just find the topic of translation highly interesting.
Translation is interesting. It's kind of weird to think of what nuances you may be missing when you're not reading the original. And so odd that translations done by two different people may be significantly different in meaning. It's best, I suppose, when the author does the translation himself.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the stories were compellingly written but the writing itself was a bit flat. I would say the prose was "effortless" in that it seemed like nothing special.
"Some beautifully poetic thing you said in Serbian could just be lost."
ReplyDeleteKim, that's such a good point. And I think that could work on a couple of levels. There could be some cultural attachments to a turn of expression that we lose, plus there's just the cadence of the native tongue that might make something read more or less beautifully. I didn't retain a lot of foreign language from high school, but when I watch a film in Spanish with subtitles, even I can note how a subtitle simplifies or even bastardizes an elegant line of dialogue.
Even if it's on a lower or subconcious level, aren't we trying to establish a rhythm to what we're reading? Like it would flow if it were read aloud, or you could get a sense for the narrator's voice?
Can't remember if I ever told you two that "Things Fall Apart" was one of the few novels I had the opportunity to teach. (Well, student-teach.) At least the author wrote his own work in English, so the story in its original form was his intent, but I would love to know what the native language adds to it. We talked a lot about ethnocentrism with that novel, possibly because if you use the "white man's" language to tell a story you end up applying his value system to it as well.
ReplyDeleteI think translating would be very interesting work!
You know what's odd as I go over this again is how uneven the writing seems. Erin, I assume you meant when you wrote translations by two different people that you were talking generally about Kim's comment about Chaucer. I actually looked back at my copy of "Mist" when I read your comment because I wondered if you meant two different people translated that. It doesn't seem so -- my copy cites just one translator -- but I thought it was possible more than one person worked on it because it was so uneven! I can save this for another post, but I thought the first and last segments were so well-written, and the middle (particularly the ski lift) just sounded amateurish at times! "I shot him a piercing glance." "I made no effort whatsoever (whatsoever!) to hide the mockery in my voice." Ugh! Bothering to explain the tone of dialogue instead of letting the words and actions speak for themselves is something a beginner would do, and it's tiresome to muddle through.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was talking about Chaucer or other classics that have been translated multiple times over the years and how different translations are considered better or more faithful. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the ski lift story. I thought the writing in that one was pretty goofy. A significant drop from the first part.
cl, Achebe is your soulmate on the question of "the Heart of Darkness." He found it vile and racist. (but I still beg to differ, hehe)
ReplyDeleteOK, for fun, on the issue of translation, some examples from the Chaucer article:
In the original "Canterbury Tales," the Wife of Bath, defending sex, says something to the effect of "For what purpose was a body made?" And Peter Ackroyd, the new translator, renders that as "Cunts are not made for nothing, are they?"
Ew.
And "On his wedding nights, he had many a merry bout with (each of his wives), so lively a man was he" ... becomes in the new translation:
"What about all those wedding nights? I bet that he did you-know-what as hard as a hammer with a nail. I bet he gave them a right pounding."
Ew.
As the article's author notes, if Ackroyd thought Chaucer was so unpoetically banal and merely obscene, why did he bother to translate him?
Ew indeed. Chaucer is supposed to be bawdy and fun, not just nasty.
ReplyDelete