Lost in Translation

A post at Writer Unboxed: On Getting Lost in Translations

Turns out the Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese text that many believe was written by a hermit named Lao Tzu, and is one of the most translated texts in all of literature. In most editions, it is made up of 81 chapters or sections – although each chapter is VERY short, often no more than a page or two in length, making it an easily digestible read. More Googling revealed scores of English translations of the Tao Te Ching, so I previewed a number of them, and started out with Stephen Mitchell’s version, which is one of the most popular English editions.

Much of this short, sometimes paradoxical and often metaphorical book really resonated with me, and Mitchell has a gift for smoothly flowing, poetic language. But I stumbled badly over some of his hyper-modern translations, and as I studied the footnotes in the book, I became aware that this was not so much a translation as an interpretation. Mitchell does not speak Chinese; he simply read a bunch of English versions of the TTC (which I’ve arbitrarily decided is the cool kids’ abbreviation for the Tao Te Ching), and then interpreted it into his own language, which was heavily informed by his training in Zen Buddhism. 

This is very interesting to me. I would never have thought of reading a lot of translated versions and then writing a version of my own without reading the original. Although … I’m not sure … it seems to me that maybe that could work? If the translated version were good? But then adding a lot of personal interpretation … you know what, I think this would be a lot more reasonable and legitimate if the resultant book were titled Stephen Miller’s Guide to the Tao Te Ching. With annotations about different versions from different translations. Extensive annotations. I don’t really think it sounds right to present this as the actual Tao Te Ching.

Here’s an example of Miller vs a more direct translation:

Gia-fu Feng and Jane English:
When the Tao is present in the universe,
the horses haul manure.
When the Tao is absent from the universe,
war horses are bred outside the city.

Stephen Mitchell:
When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.

And okay, offhand I would say the meaning is pretty close, actually. I prefer the horses, however.

Anyway, the linked post goes on to broaden the topic to translation in general — I mean translations that become very popular, that then create the ruling idea about the work in question about what it’s about, what it means. One of the works this post mentions in The Count of Monte Cristo, and this is interesting because I IMMEADIATELY thought of how vehemently I dislike the movie versions, and why? Because I think they get the heart of the story completely wrong, they totally ignore the real story and present some other story, and then people who love a movie version think THAT is The Count of Monte Cristo, which it is NOT. The linked version is the paperback Penguin classic, which has a good reputation. And why does it have a good reputation? Because Robin Buss’ translation is supposed to be the most true to the original.

This post adds, If the nuances of that example seem minor, consider flipping the script, and look at an English example: Imagine if a translator changed “Call me Ishmael” to “My name’s Ishmael.” Or even “I am Ishmael.”

I like this example because it’s so obvious how different the tone can be with changes that are honestly tiny, in a sense, but nevertheless make a giant difference.

Here’s the poetry post where I posted four versions of the same poem. There, too, the translation made a big difference.

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