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The Robber and me
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From: Marc Aronson <75664.3110>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:55:04 -0500
I've had all kinds of trouble posting to the list -- perhaps due punishment for going off on tangents in the last too rounds -- but I'm also glad that we've had some discussion before I joined in.
It was interesting to see one comment that the "seams" of the translation showed. That gets to one of the major problems with translated books: when a reader sees stiffness, awkward expression, slightly miscast word choices, they assume that was a failure of the translator. But sometimes those are failings, or even deliberate stylistic choices, in the original. Then the great question for the American editor is how much to change the text to make it smoother, easier to read and how much of the tone of the original to retain.
I first learned about Josef Holub, author of THE ROBBER AND ME, through a prior book. That won the Peter Hartling prize in Germany, and was set in the very region my mother's family is from. But I thought it would not "translate" because it was too quiet, too tied to events in the 30s in German-speaking Czechoslovakia. At best, it would be added on to a pre-war reading list.
BONIFACE, as the THE ROBBER AND ME was called in Germany, had none of those problems. It is the story of an orphan boy who has to risk his place in his Uncle's family -- a family that he increasingly needs -- for a friend, and for a truth only he knows. That struck me as a rather universal story, leavened by Holub's sense of humor. While the time and place would be a bit "foreign" for American readers, they had something of a fairy tale or at least PRINCE AND THE PAUPER quality that made them in a rough way familiar to young readers.
Yet there were translation problems, and that is why I found some of the previous posts so interesting. Some of Holub's chapters were almost like blackout sketches, a quick event that had to take place in order to move along the plot. Matt Rosen (then here at Holt, he's now at Harper), the translator Libby Crawford, the copyeditor (who also reads German and worked with the original and the translation side by side) and I all looked for ways to add just a bit more characterization and fluidity to lines and scenes. We did not alter anything substantially or significantly, and Libby and the copyeditor worked very hard to retain Holub's tone. That tone, to me, is what is best in the book: he has a way of charming us while also showing us that Boniface does not totally understand himself. You feel the kindly smile behind everything he writes, no matter how dark the scene. Yet, page by page, line by line we looked for ways to fill in description and round out character.
This then returns to the question I had hoped to discuss from the first: what is a good translation? It is something that both allows American readers to share the experience that foreign readers had when they read a book, and is recognizable enough as good American writing so that young readers, reveiwers, teachers, and parents will know that it is good. This becomes even more complicated with nonfiction, which I'd like to comment on later on.
Marc Aronson
Received on Thu 05 Mar 1998 12:55:04 PM CST
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:55:04 -0500
I've had all kinds of trouble posting to the list -- perhaps due punishment for going off on tangents in the last too rounds -- but I'm also glad that we've had some discussion before I joined in.
It was interesting to see one comment that the "seams" of the translation showed. That gets to one of the major problems with translated books: when a reader sees stiffness, awkward expression, slightly miscast word choices, they assume that was a failure of the translator. But sometimes those are failings, or even deliberate stylistic choices, in the original. Then the great question for the American editor is how much to change the text to make it smoother, easier to read and how much of the tone of the original to retain.
I first learned about Josef Holub, author of THE ROBBER AND ME, through a prior book. That won the Peter Hartling prize in Germany, and was set in the very region my mother's family is from. But I thought it would not "translate" because it was too quiet, too tied to events in the 30s in German-speaking Czechoslovakia. At best, it would be added on to a pre-war reading list.
BONIFACE, as the THE ROBBER AND ME was called in Germany, had none of those problems. It is the story of an orphan boy who has to risk his place in his Uncle's family -- a family that he increasingly needs -- for a friend, and for a truth only he knows. That struck me as a rather universal story, leavened by Holub's sense of humor. While the time and place would be a bit "foreign" for American readers, they had something of a fairy tale or at least PRINCE AND THE PAUPER quality that made them in a rough way familiar to young readers.
Yet there were translation problems, and that is why I found some of the previous posts so interesting. Some of Holub's chapters were almost like blackout sketches, a quick event that had to take place in order to move along the plot. Matt Rosen (then here at Holt, he's now at Harper), the translator Libby Crawford, the copyeditor (who also reads German and worked with the original and the translation side by side) and I all looked for ways to add just a bit more characterization and fluidity to lines and scenes. We did not alter anything substantially or significantly, and Libby and the copyeditor worked very hard to retain Holub's tone. That tone, to me, is what is best in the book: he has a way of charming us while also showing us that Boniface does not totally understand himself. You feel the kindly smile behind everything he writes, no matter how dark the scene. Yet, page by page, line by line we looked for ways to fill in description and round out character.
This then returns to the question I had hoped to discuss from the first: what is a good translation? It is something that both allows American readers to share the experience that foreign readers had when they read a book, and is recognizable enough as good American writing so that young readers, reveiwers, teachers, and parents will know that it is good. This becomes even more complicated with nonfiction, which I'd like to comment on later on.
Marc Aronson
Received on Thu 05 Mar 1998 12:55:04 PM CST
