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How thou art translated!
Aug. 9th, 2008 12:43 pmGiles Foden contributes a column to the Guardian books diary, describing what it's like for an author to attend a summer school for translators. The short version is, it makes you very aware of your prose: "The line-by-line focus made me want to go back and do it better."
His novel, The Last King of Scotland, provides a case of the question: how does the translator convey that the source language is a non-standard form:
I heard Stephen Sartarelli, who translates Andrea Camilleri's books - specifically, in this case The Patience of the Spider - from the Italian, talk about a similar issue, at an event showcasing the translators of three of the books shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger. Camilleri's detective, Inspector Montalbano, is Sicilian, and some of his colleagues speak a local dialect; one, in particular, is given to dialogues of mutual incomprehension with Montalbano's superior from the mainland. How should the translator convey the density of local speech without resorting to phonetic transcription which would deter all but the most devoted readers? Sartarelli decided he would use a dialect which was already familiar from films and television, and let his hero's sidekick speak with a Brooklyn accent. It's far from a direct equivalent, using the accent of the metropolis to evoke the speech of the remote rural fringes of the country, but it does the job, and sometimes that's the best you can ask.
A certain imprecision in the preceding paragraph may give away that the book I actually bought at that event was not the Camilleri; nor was it Ros Schwartz's the book by Dominique Manotti which in the event won the Dagger. Peter Millar spoke fluently and entertainingly of the difficulties of translating Martin Suter, who writes not simply in German but in Schweizerdeutsche, Swiss German, and of his struggles to find equivalents for, for example, examples of Swiss fusion cuisine. I might have bought his book, if the publisher had supplied any copies, but as it was settled for an earlier book, Small World, with a different translator. The first sentence had me hooked: "When Konrad Lang came back everything was on fire apart from the wood in the fireplace." I don't know how credit for that tantalising hook should be apportioned between Martin Suter and translator Sandra Harper, but I have every intention of reading some more Martin Suter and finding out.
His novel, The Last King of Scotland, provides a case of the question: how does the translator convey that the source language is a non-standard form:
"How to translate Ugandan English into Italian, for instance, when there was no equivalent? [Translator Susanna] Basso's solution was not to use dialects, but to translate Idi Amin's character, using suggestive indications of how Italian might be spoken by a petulant child."Clearly, there are problems with that, it's not ideal, but if there is no perfect solution, it may well be the best thing for that book.
I heard Stephen Sartarelli, who translates Andrea Camilleri's books - specifically, in this case The Patience of the Spider - from the Italian, talk about a similar issue, at an event showcasing the translators of three of the books shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger. Camilleri's detective, Inspector Montalbano, is Sicilian, and some of his colleagues speak a local dialect; one, in particular, is given to dialogues of mutual incomprehension with Montalbano's superior from the mainland. How should the translator convey the density of local speech without resorting to phonetic transcription which would deter all but the most devoted readers? Sartarelli decided he would use a dialect which was already familiar from films and television, and let his hero's sidekick speak with a Brooklyn accent. It's far from a direct equivalent, using the accent of the metropolis to evoke the speech of the remote rural fringes of the country, but it does the job, and sometimes that's the best you can ask.
A certain imprecision in the preceding paragraph may give away that the book I actually bought at that event was not the Camilleri; nor was it Ros Schwartz's the book by Dominique Manotti which in the event won the Dagger. Peter Millar spoke fluently and entertainingly of the difficulties of translating Martin Suter, who writes not simply in German but in Schweizerdeutsche, Swiss German, and of his struggles to find equivalents for, for example, examples of Swiss fusion cuisine. I might have bought his book, if the publisher had supplied any copies, but as it was settled for an earlier book, Small World, with a different translator. The first sentence had me hooked: "When Konrad Lang came back everything was on fire apart from the wood in the fireplace." I don't know how credit for that tantalising hook should be apportioned between Martin Suter and translator Sandra Harper, but I have every intention of reading some more Martin Suter and finding out.
