Let’s Talk Process: Works in Translation

Translation.

image via thumbtack.com

It wan’t until grad school I considered translation from another language to be a potential reading pitfall.

I was writing a paper on why the Harry Potter books were only tossed on to bonfires in this free land of ‘Murica (hint: Puritainism).  My prof suggested reading one of the series to see if the diction changed the implications surrounding magic, witchcraft, and wizardry from wholly negative to…  something else.  The only language I had a decent enough grasp of was Spanish; easy enough to find.

The whole sense of the story outside of Hogwarts was altered by the far more benign Spanish options chosen for magic words, the titles of those who do magic, and the like.

 There is no suggestion whatsoever of magic being “bad” or “evil” or anything other than “extant.”

All of the magic.  None of the accusatory stares or forced donning of false noses. image via amazon.com

Interesting.

We come next to Sergei Lukanyenko’s Night Watch series.  A story cycle I love and have read multiple times but always feel I don’t completely understand.  I mean, sure, I can follow the plot but there always seems to be something just below the surface, something I’m casting for in the dark but can’t quite find.

image via itsabookthingblog.com

Something I have a gut feeling I’d recognize in a heartbeat if there was Russian floating about in my head.  I tried to learn once for this very reason.  Sad to say, Rosetta Stone does not deliver as promised. Add to this the issue of English being the least subtle language on the planet and we poor, Russian-less souls are left tripping over giant, sharp edged language bricks instead of enjoying the sightseeing trip through the woods of a language with far more nuance and subtlety and variation.  In similar fashion, I’d love to be reading All You Need is Kill in Japanese instead of in the huge, sweaty, stinking, incompetent mongrel that is American English.  Katana versus cavalry saber.

I know which one I’d pick if I had the option.

The issues, mind, don’t stop with diction and grammar.  Culture is a huge part of storytelling and, even if the word-to-word is perfect, the translation is going to be lacking unless she who is doing said translating has done some culture homework.  Words are all well and good, but without and understanding of how all those words and cases and tenses and synonyms came to be, there’s no nuance, no… jazz hands.  The story translates,

Do we see the difference (ps: different books from the series but point stands)
image via amazon.com

but the details, the flares, the life, are nowhere to be seen.  The story face-desks, the high kicks only make it to the waist, the wheels and the sequins fall off.

If there’s an expectation of the translator some digging, you, dear reader, should expect to do the same.  There’s no reason to make your way through hundreds of pages only to skim the surface of what is.  Poor cost-benefit estimate if you’re lacking in free time as so many of us are.  So, spend a couple hours digging around; that’s what the inter webs should be fore.  Find out what it’s like to be a shapeshifting owl in Russia or a soldier in Japan.  Flip through a book (maybe an actual book) on mythology or magical creatures. Figure out what’s important to the people as a whole so that, when someone in the story makes a big deal out of something that seems small to you, you’ll understand why and integrate it into your experience instead of writing an ignorant, irritating review on Goodreads.

Oh, make sure you fact check anything you find on Wikipedia.

A little extra time will completely change your experience of reading in translation.

Jazz hands!