The Gist

by Michael Marshall Smith

A dealer in old books, lost books - books no-one knows even exist. A man who works for him, prizing meaning from places where it is deeply hidden. A book, at first unintelligible. . . but which begins to reveal its secrets in ways the translator could never have guessed.This is the story of The Gist, but that's only the beginning of the journey. Michael Marshall Smith's original short story was then translated into French by Benoit Domis, before being rendered back into English by Nicholas Royle - who had no access to the original text or author during the process.All three versions are presented in this edition. The idea is to discover what happened during the process, how much the story changed while passing through two other minds and another language. . . To see if The Gist survived.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Fiction

74 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2013

About the author

Michael Marshall (Smith) is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. His first novel, ONLY FORWARD, won the August Derleth and Philip K. Dick awards. SPARES and ONE OF US were optioned for film by DreamWorks and Warner Brothers, and the Straw Men trilogy - THE STRAW MEN, THE LONELY DEAD and BLOOD OF ANGELS - were international bestsellers. His most recent novels are THE INTRUDERS, BAD THINGS and KILLER MOVE.

He is a four-time winner of the BFS Award for short fiction, and his stories are collected in two volumes - WHAT YOU MAKE IT and MORE TOMORROW AND OTHER STORIES (which won the International Horror Guild Award).

He lives in Santa Cruz, California with his wife and son.

Reviews

[My Book Strings · Rating 3 out of 5]

The original story was okay. It had a good twist at the end, but by itself, it would not have impressed me too much. Then followed the French version, and I was happy to realize that I was able to understand most of it. But unfortunately, my French is not good enough to really compare the two versions.
For me, it got interesting when I read the re-translation, when we’re back to English. I was constantly flipping back and forth to compare the two English versions, and then figure out where the differences started. Was it during the translation into French that the “messenger bag” became a “plastic bag,” or during the re-translation? And did this little detail change the overall story?
The differences are small, but they are nevertheless there, showing how a translator can have impact on a book.
See my complete review at www.mybookstrings.com

[David Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a so-so short story that's caught up in a publishing experiment to test what happens when a story is translated out of English into French and then back again. To my mind, it's not worth the high price.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2013/0...

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever short story about translation, translated into French and then back into English with all three versions presented in one lovely little book.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, I have to say that MMS is one of my favourite authors. This is a tiny book and was a sort of experiment. MMS wrote a short story, which was then translated into French and then translated back into English by another author all three versions are contained in this tiny tome, it is worth noting that the French translator was able to consult MMS in regard to his translation the re-translator was only able to consult the French translator! I cannot speak to the French version as my French really is not good enough to read and understand the story in that language but I was pleasantly surprised that I did manage a few lines here and there. I read the original short story which was a lovely piece, very creepy and very MMS and the retranslation by Nicholas Royle, although not hugely dissimilar to the MMS version, it did not have his voice as the original author, there was definitely another mind involved with a slightly different style. This book has certainly made me realise that there is an art to translation and that while you may get the 'gist' of the original author, something of the translator is also added to the author's voice.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Translated

This is a book you read for style, rather than content. Nobody would claim that Michael Marshall Smith's 12,000-word story, "The Gist," is ground-breaking literature, though it would fit comfortably into a collection by, say, Angela Carter or Karen Russell. A translator named John, a specialist in out-of-the-way languages, is given a volume by a London rare book dealer called Portnoy; his task is not to translate—the text is like no language he has ever seen—but merely to give him the gist. John takes the book, spends a good part of Portnoy's advance on beer, and wakes up drunk in a children's playground. He does not get much further with the translation, but the words do begin to insinuate themselves into his mind. The gist, as it were. It is a fine story, with hints of both Poe and Borges in its ancestry, but not by itself worth the price of the book.

The presentation is a different matter entirely. First of all, it is beautifully printed, in Arts-and-Crafts style of around 1900, in double fine-set columns with red accents. It is sheer joy to hold and to read. But the main interest is that this same story is presented three times: in Marshall Smith's original, in a French translation by Benoît Domis, and in a retranslation of that translation back to English by Nicholas Royle. A sort of bilingual game of Postman. The idea fascinated me. But I have to say that, while the French was inevitably different, the two English versions were amazingly close, not only in meaning but also in atmosphere. I had thought that reading each story would be like immersing myself in a new experience, but in fact the second and third versions added little to my overall pleasure, although they threw up numerous smaller points of interest.

I found comparatively few substantial changes in meaning. Here is one. John is thinking what he could do with the promised money:

Smith: It meant a small gift for Cass (assuming I could track her down)....
Domis: Un petit cadeau pour Cass aussi (à condition que j'arrive a lui mettre la main dessus)....
Royle: A little present for Cass as well (provided I could put my hand on the right thing)...

That "as well" comes from the French "aussi" which Domis presumably added to shape the rhythm of the paragraph, but it is not in the original. More serious is the change from getting hold of Cass to tracking down the right present; this comes from an ambiguity of the pronouns in the nonetheless perfectly correct French.

Take a longer passage, when John first describes Portnoy. Here is Marshall Smith:

The man behind the desk in front of me sighed. This made his sleek, moisturized cheeks vibrate in a way that couldn't help but put you in mind of a successful pig, exhaling contentedly in its sty, confident that the fate that stalked its kind was not going to befall him tonight, or indeed ever. A pig with friends in high places, a pig with pull. Pork with an exit strategy.

And here, via the French of Benoît Domis, is Nicholas Royle:

The man sitting behind the desk gave a sigh that made his shiny, moisturized cheeks tremble in a way that reminded me of a pig in its piggery, the very picture of porcine contentment, convinced that the fate awaiting his fellow pigs would not befall him, not that evening, not ever. A pig with friends in high places, a pig with connections. A pig with a withdrawal strategy.

Both versions are good, and share the same basic meaning. Smith has a rhythm, though, that Royle cannot recapture, because he is coming from a language that organizes thought in quite a different way. But Royle scores some points of his own; "the very picture of porcine contentment" is superb. He does not fare so well, though, with Smith's "...a pig with pull. Pork with an exit strategy." Much of Smith's humor comes in the sudden ironic switch from "pig" (the live animal) to "pork" (the cooked meat), but the French uses the word "porc" throughout. Perhaps the translator might have considered making a similar shift, or going for the alliteration of "a pig with pull" rather than the more generic "pig with connections." But to do so without more specific prompting from the French would take him out on a limb, and risk imposing his own humor on another writer's work. So he plays it safe, and rightly so.

Those readers wanting to study the three versions in such detail will find a treasure trove. Others will get an intriguingly surreal story in a beautiful edition.

[Jack Haringa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gist offers an interesting experiment in translation, both within the confines of the original story and between the covers of this volume, which includes Smith's tale, Benoit Domis' translation of it into French, and Nicholas Royle's translation of that version back into English. The three versions are bound in a beautiful little volume that replicates the Roycroft style of Arts and Crafts book design. Sadly, my French isn't strong enough to appreciate the Domis translation, but I was surprised that the Royle didn't depart as much from the original as might have been expected. The changes are subtle, but perhaps more interesting because of that. It's a good read, but also really a curiosity.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great little short story. Fun main character to read, and the writing hooked me from the beginning. I don't normally care for short stories, but this one was quite good.

[Julieann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't a terribly important book. What is important - and it's very important - is the way the story is presented.
The basic story is about a person whose body and mind are gradually being taken over or swallowed up by an alien being. it's a common enough theme in SciFi.
What makes this book so valuable is that the original English version is followed by the French translation. That is followed by and English translation of the French copy.
The shift in terms and even in approaches is wild. it's also a little scary. Is this how our books get changed when they get translated?