Günter Grass: The New "Tin Drum" Translation and Übersetzertreffen
By Bruce Humes, published October 23, 2009, 10:40p.m.
In his recent book review of the new English translation of "The Tin Drum," Michael Dirda writes:
Grass has grown increasingly involved in the foreign versions of his work, going so far as to organize Übersetzertreffen -- short convocations of his translators -- at which he fields questions about his various books. From his experience of these meetings, Grass persuaded his publishers to commission a new English version of "The Tin Drum" from the distinguished Germanist Breon Mitchell.
It is refreshing to know that there are authors who understand the benefits of actually meeting with their translators.
Three things came to mind as I read this piece:
--- Have there been any such "TranslatorFests" in China to date?
--- I have heard occasionally of programs for literary translators in Europe, which feature an invitation to live for a few months (expenses paid) in the country whose language/culture the translator regularly interprets/translates for others. Do China, Hong Kong or Taiwan have such a program?
--- If you could re-translate any piece of modern Chinese writing, which one, and why?
Comments
If I had to pick any one work deserving of a new translation, it would be Qian Zhongshu's 围成. Not to say that I'd be up to the task -- it should really be handled by a polyglot on his own order -- but the existing English translation is just awful. I recall hearing at this year's course in Suzhou that copyright issues had kept Penguin from commissioning a new translation, which is a terrible shame: like the rest of Qian's work, it deserves better.
Wang Xiaobo's 黄金时代, being in my estimation the most likely Chinese novella to appeal to a naive audience, also deserves a better shake than it got in the recent Chinese-Wooden translation -- but as we found out from the nastygrams we got from SUNY Press, this seems unlikely.
I'm still trying to get my hands on a reliable copy (no错别字) of 围城.
I still cast my vote for 老舍's 四世同堂. The 1951 translation is garbage; although, unfortunately, since the final thirteen chapters were written by Lao She in New York, handed to her for translation and then subsequently lost, she is the most authoritative source we have. But it's a wonderful story, and Lao She's talent for description and character development is unmatched; if a translator were allowed to edit out some of the excess exclamation points, it might be a great 200-page read.
Oh, and 《雷雨》by 曹禺。
Here's a very interesting review of the new translation:
Seriously, guys, I'm cracking the whip. Get your hands off your dicks, stop wanking off and take a few seconds to post pinyin romanizations or English translations for the books and terms you refer to. When you type in Chinese, think about the blank boxes that will appear on the screens of our readers who don't have Chinese-language software. I don't know about you, but I can masturbate any time. Why do it here?
Cordially yours, Cindy M. Carter
Wank...wank...I'm not sure that one's in my vocabulary. Did you perhaps mean cuff, spank, jerk, polish or rub out? Please make sure all Gaelic usages are accompanied by English translations.
Oh, and:
Lao She's Four Generations Under One Roof, or Sishi Tongtang, and Cao Yu's Leiyu.
I'd be more specific, but my web pages are all stuck together.
Canaan "Pull, polish, violate, stimulate, but never wank" Morse
But I did love this post. I think translator convocations are an excellent idea. I'm hoping to meet Yan Lianke's French and Japanese translators. I think Li Er would benefit greatly from more collaboration among his translators. Wang Xiaobo, Lu Xun and Jia Pingwa seem like good candidates, too: the first two authors are deceased, so their translators can use all of the help they can get, and the third is an old-fashioned fellow who employs a great deal of dialect, writes in calligraphy and doesn't use computers or write e-mail. Seems like more collaboration between translators is in order.
Re: "collaboration between translators," this reminds me of my own bitter-sweet experiences when translating "Shanghai Baby."
One of the most challenging parts of the work was finding the original English/French versions of quotes by celebrities like Madonna, 2-3 of which began each of the 31 chapters (!). Honestly, I think I spent 5-10 times more time looking for many quotes than actually translating a typical paragraph of text, because the Chinese version of the quotes were often outrageously badly translated. This wasn't authoress Wei Hui's doing -- she had simply cited Chinese text she had seen in books or on the web.
At any rate, Wei Hui was apparently very impressed with my research, and subsequently sent out (something like) this memo to her Italian, Japanese and French translators (unbeknownst to me!): "If you have questions about the Chinese text or the quotes, ask Bruce first. If he can't answer, then ask me."
And ask me they did! I got a list of perhaps 40+ questions from the Japanese translator, all posed in Chinese. It was interesting to see that s/he most often had questions about phrases in Chinese that are actually English (hysterical=歇斯底里) or Chinese that has been heavily influenced by English-language slang (蒸发了). The Japanese translator of "Shanghai Baby" obviously knew very little English.
It was also a bit of relief to see that many of the questions from all three of the translators were also about phrases that I too had found "difficult."
I say "bittersweet" because I received nearly 100 such questions from the three translators, and managed to answer them...just one week before my own deadline!
Ideally, such collaboration starts a bit earlier!
Bruce Humes
Chinese Books, English Reviews
Sorry for re-posting another link to the same article Bruce did, I'm blaming jet-lag. Still, the interesting thing for me was the re-Germanification of the English translation. I wonder if everyone was in agreement that that was a good idea, or if it was Grass' plan. I'd sure like to get a sense of how the new translation reads.