Literature Translation Issues

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Steve Brankham calling from Milwaukee.

Hello, Steve.

Welcome.

What’s up?

Thank you. I’ve been listening to your show for years, and if nothing else, I’ve learned that English is subject to a lot of variations in regional dialects, and that no one particular form is the correct one. Well, something occurred to me while I was reading a book the other day, which was an Isabella Allende book, which, of course, she writes in Spanish, but it was translated.

And one word got me thinking about this, and I started to wonder if there’s no correct way to write or speak English. How does a translator know what to translate it to? Are there guidelines? Is there kind of a translator’s convention for how they do that? Is it up to the publisher, the editor, whatever?

Interesting.

And what was the passage?

The word was sack. And it struck me, why didn’t she use bag? Why sack? Sack. S-A-C-K. Sack.

So then that one simple question I had ballooned into this larger question that really I have no idea.

This is a really good question. This is a question that translators struggle with. There is a translator by the name of B.J. Epstein, and she took a look at the translations of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn into Swedish. And I think she compared something like 15 different translations.

Now, she lived for a time in Sweden. She still translates between Swedish and English. And what she figured out was that these translations, many of them just basically did standard Swedish as the form on the other end, moving from English into Swedish.

Oh, interesting.

Did not try to translate any of the dialects of the speakers. Not Jim, not Huck, not any of the Missouri kind of drawl. None of that showed up in Swedish.

Wow.

And so those translators made a choice just to go from mainstream Swedish. And when you’re translating into English, say from a Allende novel, it’s up to the translator to decide whether or not they want to choose just kind of a mainstream, kind of generic English, or if they want to try to recreate period jargon or age-specific slang or regional kind of inflections, that sort of thing.

And usually what you’ll find, though, is the default for a lot of translations is academies. Because the people who are translating tend to be fully schooled in the literature of the two communities, the two cultures that they’re moving from. And that’s the level that they’re operating at. They’re operating at kind of a university level of language almost.

So Huck Finn was translated into a more formal language?

Well, standard. I didn’t mean to say formal. I meant to say standard, which is just kind of more everyday. So they didn’t, for example, try to do what would a rural kind of unschooled, barefooted boy sound like in Sweden. They didn’t try to do Huck that way.

Gee, that sounds like sort of a shame, doesn’t it?

It does. But the other end of the problem is this. How do you communicate that? So, Steve, the problem would be, let’s just stick with Huck Finn as a really good example. The problem would be, I’ve got a rural, uneducated young man who kind of doesn’t have parents and kind of lives in a, sleeps in a barrel, right? And what is the equivalent accent that I would find in Swedish for that kid? Is there such a language?

Now, you might say, well, I’m just going to make him sound uncultured and make some typical grammatical errors. That’s one way to do it. You might also say, well, I’m going to make him sound like these certain kind of people in the south of Sweden who are seen as uncultured or rustic, and he’ll just adopt their language because the signal that is sent out to all my Swedish readers is, you know, we’re going to build upon your stereotypes. Take advantage of what you think about this kind of speech so that you will understand who Huck is and what he’s about just by the choice that we made in the dialect.

It’s complicated. And I know we have many translators listening to the show who will probably chime in and offer their opinions on this. Steve, if you want to know more about this, I do recommend that you read the blog by BJ Epstein, the translator that I mentioned. She keeps a blog called brave new words dot blogspot dot co dot UK. You can just Google her name, BJ Epstein, and you’ll find it probably be your first result.

She keeps a very active blog. She talks about these day to day issues. She talks about her work. It’s very easy to read, even if you’re not a translator.

Is she a native English speaker?

Yes, she is. She grew up in the Midwest, I believe, Chicago. And she talks at length about this stuff, and it’s an enjoyable read. She’s a good writer, which probably makes her a good translator as well.

So I would recommend that as a little bit of homework for you, okay?

I’ll do that.

It’s something to do when I’m not listening to A Way with Words.

All right.

Thank you so much for your call, Steve.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Much appreciated.

We’d love to hear your experiences with reading books in translation. You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.