Comments on: Jules Verne and the glories of multiple translations—and the complications of copyright

By: Garson O'Toole

Garson O'Toole — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:32:48 +0000

Allyn mentions Michael Kandel who created the English version of the Polish novel “The Cyberiad” by the renowned science fiction author Stanislaw Lem. I particularly remember one humorous passage in Kandel’s translation. The novel contains a robotic poet that is given the following extraordinary task.

“Have it compose a poem — a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism and in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!”

The robotic bard of Michael Kandel (translating Lem) constructs the following poem:

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.

To understand the poem it helps to know the biblical story of Samson who was a legendary warrior and strongman. Samson’s enemies induce his lover Delilah to discover the secret of his strength. Samson confides in Delilah that he will lose his strength if his hair is cut.

Delilah orders her servant to cut his hair while he sleeps, and Samson’s enemies capture him and enslave him. They blind him by holding a hot poker near his eyes. In vengeance he kills himself and many of his enemies by pushing out the pillars of a temple and causing it to collapse.

I have never seen the original Polish, and I do not know if the directive “every letter beginning with the letter s” was present. That type of constraint would make a translation quite thorny. (If this sounds familiar it might be because I commented about this poem two years ago here.)

By: Bob Gillham

Bob Gillham — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:10:00 +0000

Just to say that Verne’s French is pretty easy to get through and even one’s own bad reading of the original text is worth three times as much as any translation (which in eBooks you can keep lurking to check any difficult passages..)

Copyright is a commercial invention for commercial reasons. Any payment to ‘Geniuses’ is incidental and is circumvented by publishers in a million ways.. Read up the History of Richard Berry & his song “Louie Louie.”

Cheers

By: Allyn

Allyn — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:32:10 +0000

The translation can definitely make or break a book. Many years ago there was a long discussion on usenet about Stanislaw Lem. It was pretty generally agreed that many of the books, such as The Cyberiad, were outstanding, and the others were ho hum at best, as if there were really two different authors. Someone finally pointed out that all of the ‘good’ ones were translated by Michael Kandel, the ‘bad’ ones by an assortment of other translators–and some of them had even gone through French before they finally made it into English. The poster assured us that in the original Polish, they’re -all- great. One of the differences between Kandel and the other translators is that he explicitly doesn’t do a literal translation. Especially for the Cyberiad, which is all puns and word games, it’s not even possible to do a literal translation that holds together. But all of Lem’s books rely on language nuances, and unless the translator is more than average agile in both languages, with a good feel for the intent of the original phrasing, the sparkle gets lost and you end up with a dry gist of the original.

Unfortunately for those of us who would really love to enjoy -all- of Lem’s work in faithful translations, it doesn’t seem likely to happen in our lifetime.

By: YouGottaReadGuyDebord

YouGottaReadGuyDebord — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:50:36 +0000

LuYu, if you had not no interest for French, you could have read in the latest volume of the letters of our last genius why Guy Debord cared so much how his books were translated: they were complex, rich, subtle, incredibly intelligent, full of not so obvious references to the works of other geniuses…and many sentences had multiple meanings. He did not want people in other countries to read misleading translations:the fact is many pirate translations were so horrible as to be traitorous to his ideas. So he tested translators with a few pages, and if one passed the test, he then received very precise instructions, and then exchanged letters with him about many passages of the book.
And he needed the money of the foreign editions to be able to spend his life thinking and writing. Copyright was invented by geniuses/great thinkers/great writers to allow them to have the freedom to live an independent intellectual life, not to depend on the aristocracy/bourgeoisie or slaves/wage workers.
Your essay is wrong because you are not a genius, and totally fail to take into account the superiority of geniuses, the superiority of their rights and the importance of their freedom.
Who cares about the copyright on the works of Disney/Bono/most of what is in sale today in bookstores? I do not. Why? Read Schoepenhauer’s “Ueber Lesung” (from Parerga und Paralipomena) if you want to see things from the point of view of a genius!

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:32:19 +0000

Hi, LuYu. Many thanks for your essay on the translation issue. I don’t agree with everything in the post but emphatically believe that consumers benefit from different translations. I wish publishers of still-copyrighted works would be more flexible, although I can also understand the desire of writers for first-rate translations. The issue isn’t just money.

Just so people are clear, I personally support copyright but believe the present system is harmful both to consumers and content providers of all sizes. Under the TeleRead plan, there would be provisions for fair compensation of copyright holders.

On another topic, LuYu, please don’t worry about the long entry on the home page. Repairable! I’ll fix it for you right now. The page break icon is the fourth or so from the right on the top row in this WordPress screen shot.

I encourage all TeleBlog contributors to ask questions as you did, if they can’t find the information at wordpress.org. We need to be more and more of a multiuser site, and that means making people feel at home when they write for us.

Thanks again.

David

By: Daniel Udsen

Daniel Udsen — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:32:03 +0000

When those translations were made they were probably paying Verne royalties, but back then the stadard procedure wasnt to ask permision and sign extensive deals but simply to hand over a certain percentage of your revenue back to the author once you started to sell your translation, this is the real problem whith the way copyright is used today. It’s not just about the cash but also the control of future cashflow.

Authors deserves to be payed when someone makes money off thair work no doubt about it but they dont have the right to control how their works are used once it’s made public and today copyright grants them that right.

By: LuYu

LuYu — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:52:55 +0000

I apologize for the long post with no summary. I assumed the server would automagically limit the front page posting to two or three paragraphs. I guess I was wrong. How is that done?