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From: Marc Aronson <75664.3110>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 17:22:36 -0500
Encouraged by Ginny (it is her fault) I'm telling one last translation story. I say "fault" only because I feel funny talking only about books I've worked on, but it is not that hard to get me to go on.
This fall we are publishing two books in translation. One of which is a very unusual book. Hans Magnus Enzensberger is a well-known German intellectual. His previous books have been the sort that get reviewed in the New York Review of Books and get discussed in very brainy circles. But he wrote a 260 page, full-color book called THE NUMBER DEVIL that is a kind of fantasy that teaches math to, say, 12 year olds. It is a bestseller
(as an adult book and a children's book) in Spain, Italy, and Germany, and has been published in 16 countries. We are doing it here. But here is the challenge: it will be very expensive to produce (how do they do it in Europe?). The first thing I did to try to diminish the costs was to make sure we would have a British publisher as a partner. We need them to print with us so we can print more copies, so that each copy costs less to print.
Here's the problem: we had, then, to create a translation that would not only work as well for adults as for children, but one that would not seem "foreign" in either version of English. Michael Heim is a very experienced translator (he has translated Kundera as well as authors in many languages, he reads about 20) , but there were many mine fields. For example, "bloody" is a more harsh expletive there than here. But in one place, no other phrase than "bloody murder" would work. And then there was the author's fear the the word "devil" would lead to protests across America. Finally, the subtitle in the rest of the world is "a pillow book for those who are afraid of math." While "pillow book" can allude to Lewis Carrol, it also has more erotic connotations. And while the book does make math more approachable, it is about math theory. And for many Americans, calming math fears comes from learning how to figure out the tip after a meal, not seeing how interesting Fibinacci numbers are. So we had a long struggle over the subtitle.
The book has remained THE NUMBER DEVIL, and the subtitle is A MATHETMATICAL ADVENTURE. It will be interesting to see how well you all think we've done in appealing to different ages and different countries. Just for completion, the other is a novel called HALINKA by Mirjam Pressler, translated by Libby Crawford.
Marc Aronson
Received on Fri 13 Mar 1998 04:22:36 PM CST
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 17:22:36 -0500
Encouraged by Ginny (it is her fault) I'm telling one last translation story. I say "fault" only because I feel funny talking only about books I've worked on, but it is not that hard to get me to go on.
This fall we are publishing two books in translation. One of which is a very unusual book. Hans Magnus Enzensberger is a well-known German intellectual. His previous books have been the sort that get reviewed in the New York Review of Books and get discussed in very brainy circles. But he wrote a 260 page, full-color book called THE NUMBER DEVIL that is a kind of fantasy that teaches math to, say, 12 year olds. It is a bestseller
(as an adult book and a children's book) in Spain, Italy, and Germany, and has been published in 16 countries. We are doing it here. But here is the challenge: it will be very expensive to produce (how do they do it in Europe?). The first thing I did to try to diminish the costs was to make sure we would have a British publisher as a partner. We need them to print with us so we can print more copies, so that each copy costs less to print.
Here's the problem: we had, then, to create a translation that would not only work as well for adults as for children, but one that would not seem "foreign" in either version of English. Michael Heim is a very experienced translator (he has translated Kundera as well as authors in many languages, he reads about 20) , but there were many mine fields. For example, "bloody" is a more harsh expletive there than here. But in one place, no other phrase than "bloody murder" would work. And then there was the author's fear the the word "devil" would lead to protests across America. Finally, the subtitle in the rest of the world is "a pillow book for those who are afraid of math." While "pillow book" can allude to Lewis Carrol, it also has more erotic connotations. And while the book does make math more approachable, it is about math theory. And for many Americans, calming math fears comes from learning how to figure out the tip after a meal, not seeing how interesting Fibinacci numbers are. So we had a long struggle over the subtitle.
The book has remained THE NUMBER DEVIL, and the subtitle is A MATHETMATICAL ADVENTURE. It will be interesting to see how well you all think we've done in appealing to different ages and different countries. Just for completion, the other is a novel called HALINKA by Mirjam Pressler, translated by Libby Crawford.
Marc Aronson
Received on Fri 13 Mar 1998 04:22:36 PM CST
