1Q84: With translated books, who gets the credit if you like the writing style?

[Nick]

With translated books, who gets the credit if you like the writing style? Does the original author get the credit or does the translator (translators in this case).

My guess is it would have to be a mixture of both since you have a original meaning of a section of text that may or may not smoothly translate to another language and the translators closest approximation of that meaning based on their interpretation of that section of text (and confirmed with the author if the translator is any good). I wonder how many times a translator has added additional layers prose wise not intended by a author to a book when they translated it to a new language. I haven't had time to listen to the interviews at the end of 1Q84 with the translators but I bet there may be some insight into this question there.

[Mike]

I've been thinking about this as well. Rothfuss has written some interesting posts on the subject (http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/categ...). He actually has a private forum for his translators to ask him questions.

However, I'm not sure what you mean by "added additional layers prose wise not intended by the author". Do you mean that translators add new meaning to the work? Or turns of phrase? Puns? As far as I know, a translator's job is to convey the author's meaning as faithfully as possible. Sometimes the author will write a joke or something that doesn't render well in the target language. In that case, the translator can try to capture some of the humor, or whatever would be lost in a literal translation. But I don't think translators are seeking to add anything new to the work... they aren't adding things to the text that weren't there in the source material.

[Anne]

I agree that it should be a mixture of both. I know a translator (English to German) and she occasionally writes about translation problems on her blogs, sometimes asking the readers for suggestions when she stumbles about a particularly hard problem.

Reading about these problems made me more sensitive as to how hard it can be and that it's really not just translating words one by one.

I'm not sure about the additional layer of prose thing, but I think what definitely can happen is that meaning can be slightly changed or modified due to different vocabulary, i.e. when you simply cannot translate something as is and the closest translation might also have additional connotations in the other language. Not sure if that is clear.

It can also be puns, jokes or other word games that you cannot just translate but have to find an approximation that is somehow not exactly what the author has originally written.

Fun fact: There are actually awards for translations to reward especially good translations.

[Louise]

I'm sad to admit that I rarely give the translator much thought - except when it's a bad translation.

I was reading a book translated from Norwegian to Danish, and in the first 50 pages, I think I noticed 10+ sentences that were grammatically incorrect in Danish - to a degree that they didn't make sense, and you had to read them several times and know a bit of Norwegian to get the meaning.
Here in Denmark, were I think we have more translated fiction than Danish fiction, the publishers often seem to use one particular translator for one particular author's works. Where the chemistry matches I guess?

About puns and jokes, on another thread we were discussing how very few humorous books seem to be translated - maybe that's the hardest to convey in another language?

[Nick]

What I meant by the "prose" sentence is that a translator might unintentionally add a layer of meaning to a translated sentence or paragraph. I can see this happening unintentionally due maybe to miss-communication between the translator and the author or just because of double meanings of phrases or words within certain languages. I stated this poorly in my OP due to the fact I was really tired when I made it.

[terpkristin]

"I'm sad to admit that I rarely give the translator much thought - except when it's a bad translation."

In the interview with the translators at the end of the Audible version of 1Q84, both said that the best indication that they've done a good job is that nobody notices it was translated.

I think that I'd the author doesn't have an issue with the translation (especially in this case since Murakami is fluent in English) it's probably a good sign. I remember reading recently that the estate of Stanislaw Lem had major issues with the translation of Solaris, but the way the rights worked out, not much they could do about it. The Audible/audiobook version was not a part of the rights deal so there is a relatively recent audio version that is considered "the definitive translation" by the estate.

[Nicolai]

I recently had the opposite experience - one of my texts was translated from German to English. It is really jarring how much 'interpretation' is part of a good translation. Especially if there are no good direct translations for some of the terms you use. At least in English I could go over the translation and correct it if interpretations were way of what I intended to say.

This experience showed me how hard it must be to translate complex novels and also how difficult it must be for authors to 'give away' their work to someone else. In particular if it is in a language they don't understand.

About the original question: About a year ago I read a series from a Swedish author, reading some books in the German translation and some in the English translation. They had a completely different feel to them, that was quiet wierd.

To make a long story short: Translation is probably much much more important to a good reading experience than we realise. However, I would find it interesting if we at sword and laser would read more non-English scifi/fantasy.

[Anne]

Nicolai wrote: "However, I would find it interesting if we at sword and laser would read more non-English scifi/fantasy."

*cough* Walter Moers *cough*

[Sean]

The guy who did the fan-sub for the anime Penguin Drum had some fascinating blog entries on the subject. I particularly like the one where he explains his decision to render a certain line as "lol wut? u mad?"

Some of you may be wondering. but I didn’t make it up. It was approximately a LS-9 translation that was perfect for the situation to describe his trollish ways. Literally, the line was “What? Don’t be mad”. It was practically begging me to do it.

"LS-9" refers to a liberality scale for grading translations. He has a page in which he breaks down the scale with examples from the show:

MPD Ep2 「手段を選んでいる場合か」
1: “Measures of choosing time be?”
2: “Is this the time to be choosing measures?”
3: “This isn’t the time to be picky about our methods.”
5: “We can’t be picky about our methods.”
7: “The end justifies the means.”
9: “Himari is dead if we play it safe.”
10: “Fuck Ringo, we only care about Himari.”

Japanese is a low-context language. The subject is not needed because the language assumes that the listener/reader would understand the context already, but they must be added in English to make sense.

This line, in context, means “We don’t have the choice of doing things morally right now, and we have to do what it takes to achieve our goal.”

“The end justifies the means.” is the ideal liberal translation here because it’s a common English phrase that’s used exactly in this situation. However, if “Whatever it takes to get the job done” was chosen, there would be less emphasis on the moral issue they’re facing right now, not to mention other things like nuance and text length. The difficulty of selecting the right idiom for each situation is why viewers often perceive liberal translations to be “shit”, because the translator must have chosen the wrong one (or an appropriate one didn’t exist to begin with). It’s impossible for non-fluent source language speakers to notice liberal translations when they’re properly done, as the top-tier translators who release “A+” quality are consistently capable of.

[Sean]

Louise wrote: "About puns and jokes, on another thread we were discussing how very few humorous books seem to be translated - maybe that's the hardest to convey in another language?"

Depends upon the humor. Most of the jokes in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei are based upon Japanese culture and history, to the point that the English translation of the first volume contains ten pages of end notes. On the other hand, Kyon's narration in the Haruhi Suzumiya novels is always hilarious because deadpan snarking knows no language, and the humor in the anime Wagnaria!! is pretty much the same as Are You Being Served or Fawlty Towers.

[Esther]

Nick wrote: "What I meant by the "prose" sentence is that a translator might unintentionally add a layer of meaning to a translated sentence or paragraph. I can see this happening unintentionally due maybe to ..."
I dislike translating but being bi-lingual with English as my mother tongue I am frequently asked to translate bits and pieces for work and friends.
Translating between unrelated languages is problematic due differences between syntax. Idioms also caused trouble.
I translate from Hebrew which is a lot more casual than English so I have to adjust the tone when I am translating professional documents. In Hebrew it is also quite acceptable to be repetitive in a way that sounds clunky when translated into English.
Sometimes you just can't express subtle cultural undertones in a different language and sometimes one language has more suitable vocabulary for describing a subject so the prose flows easily in one language and is more wordy in another.

[Warren]

An interesting issue.
I'd recently noticed the same thing in the Pierre Pevel,series
(The Cardinals Blades,etc).
You can tell that the book was originally written in French
then translated. It's actually well translated but…
Different enough to slow down my read.