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Post by ozziegiraffe on Oct 10, 2018 0:08:54 GMT -5
The Word For World is Forest by Ursula K. leGuin. Not my usual fare but my book club is exploring her work this month, so I thought I would read something of hers less known. This book proves how far ahead she was in her thinking, especially about environmental issues but also patriarchy and racism. A bit stereotypical in the characters but considering everything, an interesting read. Btw , it was originally published in 1972. That was in the era after Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, which made a huge impression on me in high school biology.
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Post by lillielangtry on Oct 10, 2018 1:18:01 GMT -5
As a translator, I'd like to request that we don't merely blame the translator for works we don't like!
I'm kidding, mostly. There really are bad translations out there.
As for Pamuk, I've read him in two languages now, neither of them Turkish. I liked him better in English - a lot better - but it still wasn't exactly a light read. That's usually the case with Nobel prize winners, I've found.
Onwards and upwards with the reading, hopefully!
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Oct 10, 2018 1:36:15 GMT -5
As a translator, I'd like to request that we don't merely blame the translator for works we don't like! I'm kidding, mostly. There really are bad translations out there. ha - I just checked on a book I recently abandoned. It is by an Icelandic author and I loved the first book of his I read. Same translator for both books, so my issues with the second book probably go back to the author and a different setting, rather than the translator. ;-)
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 10, 2018 4:58:04 GMT -5
As for Pamuk, I've read him in two languages now, neither of them Turkish. I liked him better in English - a lot better - but it still wasn't exactly a light read. That's usually the case with Nobel prize winners, I've found. Onwards and upwards with the reading, hopefully! I know, sometimes I think they award the Nobel for density.
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Post by tzarine on Oct 10, 2018 9:57:37 GMT -5
the sound & the fury faulkner's brilliant & i haven't read it in 20 years
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Post by mei on Oct 10, 2018 11:21:30 GMT -5
Just finished Zadi Smith's Swing Time. The ending was a bit sudden in a way, but a good read. The chronology is a bit confusing sometimes but I think that also makes the book interesting and sometimes unexpected.
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Post by scrubb on Oct 10, 2018 23:09:35 GMT -5
As a translator, I'd like to request that we don't merely blame the translator for works we don't like! I'm kidding, mostly. There really are bad translations out there. As for Pamuk, I've read him in two languages now, neither of them Turkish. I liked him better in English - a lot better - but it still wasn't exactly a light read. That's usually the case with Nobel prize winners, I've found. I suppose I should read something else of his done with a different translator to see if it's the same. I found it very frustratingly ambiguous and although I'm sure that some of the ambiguity is the intention of the author, I think that ambiguity must be especially difficult to translate. Anyway, now I'm reading Tim Winton's "Dirt Music" which is not dense or difficult at all.
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Post by lillielangtry on Oct 11, 2018 1:10:53 GMT -5
Yeah, I think there are a few typical situations with translated literature where some People (not you, scrubb - you read so much and so widely anyway) tend to go "it's a bad translation" without much thinking about it and that irritates me (note - i'm not a literary translator so it's not that personal!)
One is books from a very different culture where the reader of the original might have been expected to understand many historical or cultural references that the reader of the Translation may well not do. What does the translator do in These circumstances? Some People appreciate the use of footnotes or endnotes. Others are totally distracted by them. Some People like certain words to be left in a foreign language in the text, perhaps with a glossary at the back. Others hate having to turn to a glossary.
If you take a book like Eka Kurniawan's Man Tiger, it's not the fault of the writer or the translator that many Readers of the English Edition are probably largely ignorant of Indonesian history and can be left Feeling rather lost. Plus, a lot of cultures don't structure plot in the same way as the Anglo Tradition and so works can feel rather like a string of episodes more than the novel form we're used to.
Deborah Smith has received a lot of criticism from Korean Speakers for her translations of Han Kang's work because she is very free and in some cases People have picked up on "Errors" in tense, etc. They've actually combed the texts pointing out "mistakes". But she has created Award-winning works that are obviously very readable to her audience - would they be better if she translated more closely?
ANYWAY; I'm going to stop rambling and make another Point actually talking about books I've read...
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Post by lillielangtry on Oct 11, 2018 1:14:05 GMT -5
Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent Very good, again. Excited to read her new book now!
Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts This was the only one of her books available on Audio, although lesser known than Bluets or The Argonauts. It's the Story of the author's aunt, who was murdered, and the Trial of her murderer decades later. Wow, her style is beautiful. I can see why People like her and will seek her out again.
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 11, 2018 4:47:36 GMT -5
Oh no lillielangtry, it's interesting to talk about translation issues, particularly to hear about it from the translator's perspective. (Well, I do some minor translating in my job now, so I understand the choices one has to make in order to convey the right subtle meaning in another language.... thankfully medical information for patients doesn't have to be subtle and beautiful, it just has to be correct.) I agree that a lot of those critiques are a matter of taste. I'm someone who prefers as much left in the original language as possible, with footnotes or glossary, but I can see how someone who's just looking for a fun read would be annoyed by that.
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Post by scrubb on Oct 12, 2018 21:34:38 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm interested in your point of view on translation for sure. I admit that I almost always wonder when I'm reading a translated book, whether the style of the author has come across. The things that jump out at me most are slightly awkward phrasings, where I wonder if it's intentional. Of course it could be that the original is saying something that is commonly said in the original language, but not in English, so it sounds non-standard but really is what the author wrote. But it does sort of jar.
Anyway, I just finished Dirt Music by Tim Winton, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Set in Western and Northern Australia, the landscape is omnipresent. Fairly straight forward story but not superficial.
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Post by shilgia on Oct 13, 2018 8:00:36 GMT -5
I love Pamuk's style. He often writes at length about nothing, but the language is just so good!
I'm reading Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon. He calls it an "atlas of depression" in that he both discusses his own experience with depression and more generally the state of knowledge in depression research: what causes it, what can be done about it, how does it feel, etc. I'm reading it slowly, because his writing is so good. I'd read a book about plankton if he wrote it.
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Post by shilgia on Oct 13, 2018 8:02:46 GMT -5
On translation, the Dutch author Harry Mulisch has said in interviews that after his work started to get translated, he made some adjustments in how he wrote. He'd try to avoid Dutch-specific things that he was afraid could not be translated. In his case, I think that was really too bad, because wordplay, coded messages, and the like were a central part of his style, and those are hard to translate.
It made me wonder how many other authors changed their style with translatability in mind.
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 13, 2018 19:41:37 GMT -5
shilgia, that is too bad - I would love to read something with very Dutch specific terms, translated via footnote or parenthetical phrase. What a missed opportunity to learn something about another culture.
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Post by scrubb on Oct 13, 2018 20:28:05 GMT -5
I love Pamuk's style. He often writes at length about nothing, but the language is just so good! Ok, then I'm definitely going to blame this one on the translator, because the language was not particularly good at all. It felt like it was unable to express what it was actually trying to say.
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Post by shilgia on Oct 13, 2018 20:44:05 GMT -5
Yeah, maybe it was a translation issue. I haven’t read The White Castle.
And sorry, Lillie, for blaming it on the translator. Do you feel that’s really unreasonable to do, though? I have never translated a full book, but I’ve translated shorter things and really struggled to make it sound good. Even when translating something nonliterary, like a user manual or the contents of an email, the translation can come out extremely clunky. I suppose good translator knows how to fix this, but surely not every translator is good? I feel like familiarity with what it’s like to translate is exactly what makes me blame things like this on the translation.
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Post by lillielangtry on Oct 14, 2018 9:49:19 GMT -5
Yeah, maybe it was a translation issue. I haven’t read The White Castle. And sorry, Lillie, for blaming it on the translator. Do you feel that’s really unreasonable to do, though? I have never translated a full book, but I’ve translated shorter things and really struggled to make it sound good. Even when translating something nonliterary, like a user manual or the contents of an email, the translation can come out extremely clunky. I suppose good translator knows how to fix this, but surely not every translator is good? I feel like familiarity with what it’s like to translate is exactly what makes me blame things like this on the translation. Well, I think if you're a literary translator and you can't make it sound good, then something is seriously wrong. Bluntly. It's not something I'm perfect at by any means. The sort of translating I do is often legal or technical and in that case, I have to translate pretty closely and no, my texts are not always wonderful, smooth-reading gems. The originals aren't either! But honestly, we work extremely hard to make even emails and reports not sound "clunky". In no way am I suggesting that there are not examples of bad translation out there! (And everyone has to learn - I'm sure my early translations were dreadful). Especially if you speak the original language involved, you might be able to "hear" the original behind the translation. And sometimes you can spot actual errors. I read a book from Argentina in which a whole list of important people were named, including "St Martin". I was desperate to check the original. Because I very strongly suspect that the "San Martin" that had been translated was not the saint at all, but Jose de San Martin, the South American Independence leader! Ouch, if so. But, I find "the translation is bad" is sometimes used as shorthand for "I didn't enjoy the style" or even "this book was difficult/confusing". And sometimes translators are guilty of picking on other translators when they seem to believe there is only one right answer to a translation problem, which is rarely the case. I would give Megan McDowell as an example of a translator whose skill is wonderful. Try anything she translated (Samanta Schweblin, Lina Meruane, Mariana Enriquez, etc). Finally, if anyone is still interested in this, there's a fantastic article from the New Yorker about the various translations of the Russian classics: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars
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Post by lillielangtry on Oct 14, 2018 9:52:31 GMT -5
p.s. And if anyone is really, really interested, pick up Kate Briggs' This Little Art, which is all about literary translation and has a lot about criticising translations, mistakes, etc.
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Post by shilgia on Oct 14, 2018 10:42:42 GMT -5
p.s. And if anyone is really, really interested, pick up Kate Briggs' This Little Art, which is all about literary translation and has a lot about criticising translations, mistakes, etc. That is actually right up my alley. Thanks for the tip!
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Post by scrubb on Oct 14, 2018 12:37:14 GMT -5
You know, I paged through The White Castle trying to find some examples of the text that I found dissatisfying to quote here, and when I re-read specific passages they were less ambiguous than I remembered. That said, I still think that overall there were still problems with it, which I don't know whether to put down to the original or the translation. (Also, it's on my kindle which I find more difficult to 'page through' so I likely just couldn't find the worst parts.)
The "story" is of a Venetian astronomer who is captured by Turks and becomes a slave to a man who looks exactly like him. Theoretically the ITalian is supposed to teach the Turk everything he knows, but it turns out the Turkish man really wants to figure out why he is different from others (in his mind, much more intelligent and discerning); why everyone else is so stupid, and what makes him who he is. "Why am I what I am?" The narrator (the Venetian) goes from hating to fearing to loving to hating to fearing to loving his master, and he tells the guy to sit down and write while thinking about why he is what he is. His master makes him sit and write that stuff for himself, too. And once they both take off their shirts and look into a mirror together for hours. And frequently the narrator is trying to trick his master into something, though who knows what? Doing something that won't actually help him figure out what he's trying to figure out, maybe?
And though he writes as though he's full of fear and hatred most of the time that they're sitting writing down why they are who they are, or looking in the mirror, later in the book he says something about looking back at that time when they were so happy. I think that is what bothered me the most - because the story is theoretically written by a coherent narrator at some point much later in his life, it doesn't make sense that he changes his view on what his feelings were then. I mean, of course a person can remember things differently over time; but this is not in the form of a journal where you could understand the change in viewpoint over time.
So, is that unreliable narrator intentional? - because if so, it just irritated me. WHich makes it my failing for being unable to appreciate something or other. Or did Pamuk mess up? Or did the translator fail to get something across?
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Post by lillielangtry on Oct 14, 2018 13:48:44 GMT -5
From your summary, that sounds like a book that would annoy me in any case! But from a summary I probably wouldn't want to read My Name is Red either (a murder, told from multiple viewpoints including inanimate objects, lots of digressions about the history of Turkish painting/script). And I did like that.
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Post by sprite on Oct 14, 2018 15:46:15 GMT -5
Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth, 1992 booker prize. picked up at my inlaws.
aged 21, erasmus Kemp lost his bankrupt father and fortune, and spends his life trying to clear the family name. he discovers rumours that the slaveship his father has invested in was not lost at sea, but actually run aground in florida, at this time a recent british acquistion. he goes out to look for the ship's crew and slaves who may have started a new community, but especially to find the cousin he hates, who had gone out as the ship's doctor.
it's a horrific look at the legal and financial policies around slave ships, as well as the beginnings of damaging policies towards agreements with native americans.
even in the new community where black and white are equal, the africans are aware that unlike the british men, they are not there as a result of bad choices, and daily deal with the struggle to cooperate with, and be friendly with, men who had humiliated them for financial gain.
i found the parts of the book deal with Kemp to be irritating, drawn out, over-introspective, and over the top, but then that is his character. i preferred the sections around the ship's crew and the africans, as there was more action and momentum.
it wasn't an easy read, and quite a bit of it i already knew from history study, but i would still recommend it.
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 15, 2018 4:45:02 GMT -5
51. Melanie Choukas-Bradley, The Joy of Forest Bathing
The author of this book is a lovely person who I know from the nature center; she's written several books about trees and parks in DC. This one is about a practice that people developed in Japan, where you go into the forest as a meditative activity; there's data showing that it has a beneficial psychological effect. The term "forest bathing" is said to be a fairly literal translation from the Japanese term (shinrin-yoku).
It's a tiny book, quick read, with lots of lovely illustrations by a woman from the Netherlands. The book talks first about the author's experience going with people who do this in Japan, and then follows that with suggestions for doing this forest meditation in the four temperate seasons. I found out by reading this that I already sort of do this, so I didn't really learn all that much from it, but it was a lovely book and I'd absolutely recommend it to people who seem so inclined.
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Post by sprite on Oct 15, 2018 11:21:33 GMT -5
So I started reading 'The Power' last night, and am well impressed with my restraint in not reading until 3am. But there's a thing that's bugging me, and now i can't stop thinking about it. the girls learn to send an electric shock into another body. but i seem to remember reading in first aid that after a person has had an electric shock, not to touch them as the electricity will continue into you. how are the girls not shocked, given they have contact with the body of the recipient in more than one point? wouldn't the electricity flow back?
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 15, 2018 12:40:29 GMT -5
sprite The whole thing is rather medically implausible, so what’s one more detail.... (Loved the book tho)
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Post by shilgia on Oct 15, 2018 17:02:29 GMT -5
Huh. I received the book as a gift, and hadn't start reading it yet. It's good then?
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 15, 2018 18:53:18 GMT -5
I found it pretty compelling. It wasn't the most subtle thing I've read all year, but I had a hard time putting it down. It delves a bit into the nature of power and what it does to people, too, which I thought was good.
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Post by sophie on Oct 15, 2018 21:10:47 GMT -5
The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer. Good escapist thriller with a few twists. Perfect for a bathtub read.
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Post by sprite on Oct 16, 2018 8:20:48 GMT -5
I'm definitely enjoying it, partly because of the play with gender roles. I noticed early in that the writer seemed to have a male voice, and got distracted for sometime wondering how i could test that theory out.
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 16, 2018 21:03:26 GMT -5
52. Bethany C. Morrow, Mem
This was a great little book! It's speculative fiction featuring black characters and set in Montreal in the 1920s. Which would be interesting enough in itself, but here the premise is that people who have a memory they want to get rid of can undergo a procedure to have the memory extracted from them, which enables them to forget it. But the thing is that the extracted memory comes out in the form of shadow-selves who have no volition or thought, just the memory. Except for one of them... and that exceptional memory-person (or Mem, as in the title) is the protagonist.
I've been going out of my way lately to look for sci-fi by women of color, and everything I've found so far has been really interesting and well written.
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