piatiknizhie in English Pentalogy

[Valentino, Russell]

This kind of thing happens quite frequently in interpreting, where the rhetorical aspects of translating become especially apparent. The interpreter makes an assessment of the audience's willingness/ability to understand or accept something and shifts the mode of expression accordingly. The funniest example I've heard was from Esther Allen at last year's American Literary Translators Association annual meeting, where she told the story of a visit by Jimmy Carter to Japan. The audience laughed so hard at a joke he made that afterward he asked the interpreter what exactly she had said. Her sheepish reply was that she had realized she wouldn't be able to convey the humor of his anecdote adequately, so she had told the audience, "The President of the United States has just told a joke. Please laugh."

Literary translators often don't seem to see that they are engaged in rhetorical acts, too, gauging their audience and shifting the way they express themselves accordingly, and not just at the lexical or syntactic level.

Russell Valentino

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Chandler
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 1:35 AM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] piatiknizhie in English Pentalogy

I think it is more than clear that Olga has made her choice 'consciously with an understanding of the implications'!  You seem, Paul, to be forgetting that, like most activities, translation can serve many purposes. I know one interpreter who was congratulated for her diplomacy after the successful performance of an opera.  The producer was, I think, Lyubimov;
the orchestral conductor was  George Solti (I may have muddled the names). Solti told her that, but for her diplomacy (i.e. MIStranslations) the production would have fallen apart.

On one occasion Solti asked why Lyubimov kept using the word IDIOT so often. The interpreter sweetly replied that it was a Russian word meaning 'he/she is coming/going'.  Solti did not really believe this, but I think he was so amused and charmed that he did not continue the row with Lyubimov.

R.




> Olga Meerson wrote:
> 
>> The translation is poor, of course, but the original locution is even
>> "poorer". Pentaptych sounds perfectly adequate but doesn't make me
>> any happier about the original expression. Sometimes a perfect
>> translation lays bare the badness of the original, thereby expressing
>> condescension--in this case, towards Russian colleagues who use a
>> word in such a bad taste so liberally... I would opt for covering up
>> for my colleagues' bad taste. Although neither ethnically Russian nor
>> even a citizen of Russia, I feel somewhat patriotic when it comes to
>> these matters. It is like covering up the body of Noah, if he happens
>> to be your father.
> 
> Well, if you'd like to revise and improve the original, that's a valid
> choice but one you should make consciously with an understanding of the
> implications. It's no longer translation, it's, hmm, "translation plus,"
> or something. I would have no qualms about cleaning up the occasional
> typographic error, but before rewriting an original with the aim of
> improving it I would secure my client's fully informed consent. I don't
> want him coming back later saying, "you misled me about what was in the
> original, I didn't realize what a crock it was...."
> 
> As for condescension, I don't agree that rendering the original
> faithfully expresses condescension; to the contrary, I think it
> expresses respect. But taking it upon myself to "improve" it might well
> be condescending.

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