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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 17 of 133 12 July 2012 at 12:54am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-09-11 Montag-Mittwoch|Mandag|Onsdag
Dansk Did a chapter with audio from TYS and related wordlisting. This evening, watched Ep 4 from "Borgen" on iPlayer, and plan to watch Ep 5 on TV at the later hour of midnight...hmm, maybe iPlayer would be a better choice, but I might as well keep up the momentum. Deutsch I checked that 1928 (H.T.Lowe-Porter) translation of "Death in Venice" a bit more carefully, and indeed, it is not close enough to the German to be useful for any form of parallel reading, although it's fine for getting an overall idea of the story. So I went in search of alternatives, and have now sent off for two interesting ones (fairly cheap, 2nd hand). I also found another translation of "Irrungen, Wirrungen" (Fontane), by Peter Bowman, who actually came to give a presentation to our Anglo-German club, about another book of his. Interestingly the older translation is by a Derek Bowman, and I wonder if they are related. It will be very interesting to compare them... And while I was busy beating beating up my credit card to within an inch of its life, I sent off for the Angel Books translation of "Unwiederbringlich" (also Fontane). And, as mentioned in another thread, I found a nice translation of "Effi Briest" in the library, in a Penguin Classics edition (it's also appeared in Angel Books), by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers (with notes also by HC). I'm really enjoying it, although I wasn't meaning to read it just now, but I'm finding it hard to put down. It's cleverly done, because it manages to convey the sense of the period, without using archaic English, while also remaining reasonably close to the German. I'm certainly picking up some subtleties which I missed from the German, and the abridged translation on Project Gutenberg. hmm, yes well, I seem to have gone from being a masochistic purist who eschewed translations (at least too early), into becoming something of a collector of them! (maybe one day a connoisseur :-) ). Ah well, whenever I worry about my change of heart, I just mutter the phrase "comprehensible input" to myself... Edited by montmorency on 12 July 2012 at 12:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6647 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 133 12 July 2012 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the world of bilingual texts. I have found that translations of non-fiction sometimes are more literal because the translators are less keen to be inventive AND because the texts in themselves are less ambiguous.
And even further away from that unhealthy masochistic purism: machine translations from your target language may be full of errors, but those errors (in your base language) will often be so glaring that you easily can spot them, whereas human translators can deviate from the original texts in all kinds of covert and insiduous ways. Edited by Iversen on 12 July 2012 at 10:22am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 19 of 133 12 July 2012 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-12 Donnerstag|Torsdag
Deutsch I received today one of the translations of Death in Venice (and other stories), this one by David Luke. Although this (used) edition is from 1996, it seems the same translation first appeared in 1970 in the USA in Bantam, so it's not exactly new. He refers to the 1928 translation by Helen Lowe-Porter in unflattering terms, and proceeds to give chapter and verse of some of the errors in several of the stories. He does charitably say that she was working under pressure (she translated a lot of Mann's work). I would also add that compared with today, she did not have electronic dictionaries or the internet, and perhaps the printed German-English dictionaries of her day were not very good. The only unforgiveable sin (I don't know who would be to blame; probably not her) is that this translation continued to be printed, uncorrected, year after year, for a very long time (and maybe still is being printed in its original form ... I've seen it on sale online, but not seen the text). I also received the Peter James Bowman translation of "Irrungen Wirrungen" (Fontane), which he renders as "On tangled Paths". It is certainly not identical to the Derek Bowman ("Entanglements") translation, although in places it is quite similar. In fact, he refers to that, and three others thus: "...these versions fall too far short of the original in too many ways to allow readers to form a true idea of its quality". I had not realised that he did a PhD at Cambridge on Fontane, so I suppose he knows what he is talking about. He makes no mention of being related to Derek Bowman, so I imagine that is just a coincidence. Intriguingly, I found this on Amazon: "The Bowmans: a Liverpool Family History [Unknown Binding] Peter Bowman (Author), Derek Bowman (Author)" However, the author of "On tangled Paths" uses the name "Peter James Bowman", so maybe the one above is someone else. I've been continuing to read my Penguin Classics translation of Effi Briest. I'm not attempting to L-R it at this point (I've done it before, with the Librivox recordings, and the help of the abridged translation on Project Gutenberg), but occasionally I'll go back to the original and compare a page or so, or a paragraph, or a phrase, and sometimes "harvest" a "new" word. One of these days I'll go back and L-R it again, but I have plenty of other material to be occupied with. Edited by montmorency on 12 July 2012 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 20 of 133 12 July 2012 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Good points, and it is probably a lot more of a danger with translations of "literary" authors, where the translator has to try to emulate a high literary style in another language, and that must be quite hard to do and remain faithful to the original. I have worked a bit with google translations of books from my TL, and I probably have an "opportunity" to do rather more of this, since I would quite like, ultimately, to read all of the Fontane novels, for example, and there are several for which I have not so far found any translation. In my time here on HTLAL, I have learned, from you and others, to be wary of literary translations, but it's only now that I've realised for myself how much of a potential minefield it is. And I probably ought to read a bit more non-fiction. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 21 of 133 14 July 2012 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-13 Freitag|Fredag
Deutsch I received 2 more translations I'd ordered (both used; both cheap): 1. "Entanglements" (Irrungen, Wirrungen) by Derek Bowman, a nicely printed hardback in lovely condition. (The library copy can go back now). Good notes. 2. "Death in Venice", this time translated by Stanley Applebaum (Dover Thrift Edition, 1995). No additional stories, but some very interesting notes. I will try to transcribe some of them in a later edit or post. I recently reactivated my Lovefilm membership, and received 2 DVDs today. I was surprised to get these as they were nowhere near the top of my list. In fact I don't even remember putting them on. 1. "Le Pere de mes Enfants". The sad story of a film producer, apparently based on a real character and actual events. Unfortunately, since putting my French studies "on hold", I have rather neglected French films. This one reminded me how good they can be. 2. "The Baader-Meinhof Complex". I thought this was an excellent film, with a useful "making of" extra. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a technical problem, either just with my copy, or with the film as a whole. The volume of the dialogue was much lower than the background sounds....the balance was impossibly wrong, so it was very difficult to hear the dialogue. Obviously, not as useful as it could have been for a language learner. Well, whatever one thinks of the politics (and of course we don't discuss politics here), that period was an important one, and the story fascinating, and at the same time tragic. I remember those times well, from an English perspective. Revolution was in the air all over Western Europe, but obviously most violently in West Germany. I also studied this aspect of German history somewhat in the OU German course I did quite a few years back, although there is of course a lot that I still don't know about it. The film was based on a book by Stefan Aust, who also co-operated in making the film. I think I want to read that book now. In England, they were always known as the "Baader-Meinhof 'Gang'", and never the RAF - that would have been too confusing (with the Royal Air Force). "Baader-Meinhof" is in any case, something of a misnomer, even if Ulrike Meinhof did become a signicant part of it. As this film portrays it anyway, the original key figures were Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, and Meineke's position always seemed a little precarious. She had only joined the group by accident, almost. A tragic story, certainly in human terms. Around the same time I was studying this period, I also read Heinrich Böll's "Die Verlorene Ehr der Katharina Blum, which deals with a young woman who unknowingly shelters a suspected terrorist on the run, and get vilified by the "Regenbogenpresse". I believe that Böll also was the target of the same popular press. Edited by montmorency on 15 July 2012 at 2:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 22 of 133 17 July 2012 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-14-16 Samstag|Sonnabend-Montag|Lørdag-Mondag
Deutsch I finished the Penguin Classics translation of Effi Briest, plus selected parts again in German. I'm now re-reading the interesting notes in my German edition. Although the details were rather different, the story is based on real life events. Fontane seems to have had a fairly complicated view of Prussian society at the time, and perhaps his views changed to some extent over time. Interesting to note that Crampas's second was one Herr Buddenbrooks, which inspired the title of Thomas Mann's famous work. I had completely forgotten that Instetten was actually sent to prison, but only served a token 6 weeks, which is exactly what happened in the real case. In neither case did it do any harm to their careers! I'm getting the impression that the person writing these notes takes a much more radical view of Prussian society than did Fontane himself, although he wan't simply a conservative either. It seems that women were treated very unfairly in this society, but neither Effi nor Baroness von Briest actually seem to feel all that oppressed, in spite of everything. It is interesting that Tony (Antonie) Buddenbrooks in Thomas Mann's book, is twice divorced, but she is still accepted in polite society. Of course, she was not the "guilty party", and it was she who divorced her husbands. I had read elsewhere that divorced women in Germany could be better treated than their counterparts in England at the time. Of course, poor old Effi was the "guilty party" in this case, and so became "ruined", in the eyes of society. Back to the English translation, and I was rather surprised to find they had translated "Magistratsmitglied" as "magistrate". This was about the worthy Gieshübler, who was both a "Stadtrat" and a "Magistratsmitglied", which according to all my dictionaries would mean he was both a town councillor and a member of the city council or municipal authorities. I assume that Kessin, as a small town, would have its own town council, but that it would also be part of a larger authority, and Gieshübler was a member of that also. There was also a questionable "literary" translation, which they did fully explain in the notes, but I think would have been better translated literally, and then the idiomatic meaning explained in a footnote. This is in chapter 17 where Effi and Crampas are having a picnic lunch after horse riding, and Effi hands Crampas a roll in the lid of the bread basket, apologising. He replies "Ein Korbdeckel ist kein Korb". In the translation, this is: "The giver not the gift is what matters". However, in the notes, they explain the original, and that it is a reference to the saying: "Jemandem einen Korb geben", which means idiomatically to turn someone down. In view of Crampas's later seduction of Effi, this is fairly significant, and it's a shame it was lost with the rather lame English expression that they used. However, this is perhaps to be too fussy, and overall, it was a very fair translation. Dansk 2 chapters of TYSCD plus some vocabulary work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 23 of 133 17 July 2012 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-17 Dienstag|Tirsdag
Dansk Several more chapters of TYCD, plus related vocabulary work. The grammar is getting a little more complicated now, but I'm not worrying too much about the trickier bits for the moment, in favour of just learning vocabulary. I'm aware that I'll be revisiting this several more times, if not many times. Deutsch I have to go on a train journey tomorrow, so I think I'll take my English translations of Irrungen, Wirrungen, and Unwiederbringlich; something not too demanding in the presence of what I know will be a lot of distractions on that particular journey. At home for the moment, I think I'm going to concentrate on my two translations of Death in Venice. To get in some actual German I listened to some of the (German) audiobook. I didn't try to do any reading, but concentrated very hard on actual listening. I found this quite helpful. I think it's just another aspect of "Listening- Reading", but in this case, without the reading part. Each aspect has its time and place. I don't think I'd call this exactly "listening like a bloodhound" - that's slightly different. I'd just call it intense listening or something, not that the name matters. Edited by montmorency on 18 July 2012 at 10:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 24 of 133 19 July 2012 at 3:43am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-18 Dienstag|Tirsdag
Back from London now. Although it wasn't my reason for going, I thought I should make a pilgrimage to the famous Foyles Bookshop (Charing Cross Road), which I had never been to before, and the (apparently relatively new) shop-within-a-shop, Grant and Cutler, the language bookshop. Very interesting. Lots of Russian material; and Arabic. Plenty of Portuguese, with the usual mainstream European languages, and a reasonable amount of the Scandinavian languages. I didn't happen to notice Chinese, Japanese or Korean sections, but I'd be a be surprised if they were not represented. What I did notice were the prices. I didn't see any bargains. If you are coming into the country with a strong currency (that's almost anything except the £ Sterling), you might not find them too bad, but....well, I was a bit surprised. At least the coffee is cheap in the rather charming little coffee shop, and there are free Jazz sessions on some evenings (including this evening, but I had other plans). Deutsch Almost finished one of the translations (Derek Bowman) of "Irrungen, Wirrungen". He calls it "Entanglements". It is a rather bittersweet story, and I think Fontane is showing himself at his most humane, and the notes say it's one of his favourite stories. It's quite short, and also rather celebrates the Berlin of its time. If only one had a time machine. The translator seems to portray the ordinary people (with the exception of Lene, the heroine), as speaking in a Cockney-like manner. It will be interesting to see what the other translation makes of it, and the original, which I have hardly looked at. Lene, for some reason, apparently speaks in a more less educated fashion, although she is clearly not of the same class as her lover, Botho, who is of the nobility. Edited by montmorency on 19 July 2012 at 3:59am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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