Hello LBs,
Just checking my emails and noticed that Francine Prose has a review of Colm Toibin's new collection of short stories, The Empty Family, in the current edtion of the New York Review of Books.
Saturday 15 January 2011
Monday 26 April 2010
The Art of Translation
We were only discussing this very thing at LB on Saturday!!!!!
Michael
The Art of Translation
Who wrote the Milan Kundera you love? Answer: Michael Henry Heim. And what about the Orhan Pamuk you think is so smart? Maureen Freely. Or the imaginatively erudite Roberto Calasso? Well, that was me.
The translator should do his job and then disappear. The great, charismatic, creative writer wants to be all over the globe. And the last thing he wants to accept is that the majority of his readers are not really reading him.
His readers feel the same. They want intimate contact with true greatness. They don't want to know that this prose was written on survival wages in a maisonette in Bremen, or a high-rise flat in the suburbs of Osaka. Which kid wants to hear that her JK Rowling is actually a chain-smoking pensioner? When I meet readers of my own novels, they are disappointed I translate as well, as if this were demeaning to an author they hoped was "important".
There is complicity between globalisation and individualism; we can all watch any film, read any book, wherever made or written, and have the same experience. What a turn-off to be reminded that in fact we need an expert to mediate; what the Chinese get is a mediated version of me; what I'm reading is a mediated Dostoevsky.
Some years ago Kazuo Ishiguro castigated fellow English writers for making their prose too difficult for easy translation. One reason he had developed such a lean style, he claimed, was to make sure his books could be reproduced all over the world.
What if Shakespeare had eased off the puns for his French readers? Or Dickens had worried about getting Micawber-speak into Japanese?
Translation has been even more of an issue for Kundera, concerned his style was being made to sound banal. The translator's "supreme authority", Kundera thundered in Testaments Betrayed, "should be the author's personal style... But most translators obey another authority, that of the conventional version of 'good French, or German or Italian'."
Yet deviation from a linguistic norm only has meaning in the context of the language from which it sprang. When Lawrence writes of an insomniac Gudrun in Women in Love that "she was destroyed into perfect consciousness", he gets his frisson. But what if destruction was understood as a transformation; what if consciousness was seen negatively?
You'll never know exactly what a translator has done. He reads with maniacal attention to nuance and cultural implication, conscious of all the books that stand behind this one; then he sets out to rewrite this impossibly complex thing in his own language, re-elaborating everything, changing everything in order that it remain the same, or as close as possible to his experience of the original. In every sentence the most loyal respect must combine with the most resourceful inventiveness. Imagine shifting the Tower of Pisa into downtown Manhattan and convincing everyone it's in the right place; that's the scale of the task. Writing my own novels has always required a huge effort of organisation and imagination; but, sentence by sentence, translation is intellectually more taxing. On the positive side, the hands-on experience of how another writer puts together his work is worth a year's creative writing classes. It is a loss that few writers "stoop" to translation these days.
Of course, if the translator is poor there will be awkward moments of correspondence (you get the content but not the style); alternatively the prose will be fluent but off the mark (you get style but not content). The translator who is on song – the one who has the deepest understanding of the original and the greatest resources in his own language – brings style and content together in something altogether new that is also astonishingly faithful to its model.
Occasionally, a translator is invited to the festival of individual genius as the guest of a great man whose career he has furthered; made, even. He is Mr Eco in New York, Mr Rushdie in Germany. He is not recognised for the millions of decisions he made, but because he had the fortune to translate Rushdie or Eco. If he did wonderful work for less fortunate authors, we would never have heard of him.
This is why one has to applaud Harvill Secker for launching a prize for younger translators, one of the few prizes to recognise a translator not because he is associated with a famous name, but for translating a selected story more convincingly than others.
Each generation needs its own translators. While a fine work of literature never needs updating, a translation, however wonderful, gathers dust. Reading Pope's Homer, we hear Pope more than Homer. Reading Constance Garnett's Tolstoy, we hear the voice of late-19th-century England. We need to go back to the great works and bring them into our own idiom. To do that we need fresh minds and voices. For a few minutes every year we really must acknowledge that translators are important, and make sure we get the best.
NEW PRIZE
Harvill Secker and Waterstone's have teamed up to launch the Harvill Secker Young Translators' Prize. This year Spanish is the chosen language and entrants will be asked to translate a short story by the Argentinian writer Matías Néspolo. The winning entry will receive £1,000. To enter visit harvillseckeryoungtranslatorsprize.com
Tim Parks The Observer New Review 25 April 2010
Michael
The Art of Translation
Who wrote the Milan Kundera you love? Answer: Michael Henry Heim. And what about the Orhan Pamuk you think is so smart? Maureen Freely. Or the imaginatively erudite Roberto Calasso? Well, that was me.
The translator should do his job and then disappear. The great, charismatic, creative writer wants to be all over the globe. And the last thing he wants to accept is that the majority of his readers are not really reading him.
His readers feel the same. They want intimate contact with true greatness. They don't want to know that this prose was written on survival wages in a maisonette in Bremen, or a high-rise flat in the suburbs of Osaka. Which kid wants to hear that her JK Rowling is actually a chain-smoking pensioner? When I meet readers of my own novels, they are disappointed I translate as well, as if this were demeaning to an author they hoped was "important".
There is complicity between globalisation and individualism; we can all watch any film, read any book, wherever made or written, and have the same experience. What a turn-off to be reminded that in fact we need an expert to mediate; what the Chinese get is a mediated version of me; what I'm reading is a mediated Dostoevsky.
Some years ago Kazuo Ishiguro castigated fellow English writers for making their prose too difficult for easy translation. One reason he had developed such a lean style, he claimed, was to make sure his books could be reproduced all over the world.
What if Shakespeare had eased off the puns for his French readers? Or Dickens had worried about getting Micawber-speak into Japanese?
Translation has been even more of an issue for Kundera, concerned his style was being made to sound banal. The translator's "supreme authority", Kundera thundered in Testaments Betrayed, "should be the author's personal style... But most translators obey another authority, that of the conventional version of 'good French, or German or Italian'."
Yet deviation from a linguistic norm only has meaning in the context of the language from which it sprang. When Lawrence writes of an insomniac Gudrun in Women in Love that "she was destroyed into perfect consciousness", he gets his frisson. But what if destruction was understood as a transformation; what if consciousness was seen negatively?
You'll never know exactly what a translator has done. He reads with maniacal attention to nuance and cultural implication, conscious of all the books that stand behind this one; then he sets out to rewrite this impossibly complex thing in his own language, re-elaborating everything, changing everything in order that it remain the same, or as close as possible to his experience of the original. In every sentence the most loyal respect must combine with the most resourceful inventiveness. Imagine shifting the Tower of Pisa into downtown Manhattan and convincing everyone it's in the right place; that's the scale of the task. Writing my own novels has always required a huge effort of organisation and imagination; but, sentence by sentence, translation is intellectually more taxing. On the positive side, the hands-on experience of how another writer puts together his work is worth a year's creative writing classes. It is a loss that few writers "stoop" to translation these days.
Of course, if the translator is poor there will be awkward moments of correspondence (you get the content but not the style); alternatively the prose will be fluent but off the mark (you get style but not content). The translator who is on song – the one who has the deepest understanding of the original and the greatest resources in his own language – brings style and content together in something altogether new that is also astonishingly faithful to its model.
Occasionally, a translator is invited to the festival of individual genius as the guest of a great man whose career he has furthered; made, even. He is Mr Eco in New York, Mr Rushdie in Germany. He is not recognised for the millions of decisions he made, but because he had the fortune to translate Rushdie or Eco. If he did wonderful work for less fortunate authors, we would never have heard of him.
This is why one has to applaud Harvill Secker for launching a prize for younger translators, one of the few prizes to recognise a translator not because he is associated with a famous name, but for translating a selected story more convincingly than others.
Each generation needs its own translators. While a fine work of literature never needs updating, a translation, however wonderful, gathers dust. Reading Pope's Homer, we hear Pope more than Homer. Reading Constance Garnett's Tolstoy, we hear the voice of late-19th-century England. We need to go back to the great works and bring them into our own idiom. To do that we need fresh minds and voices. For a few minutes every year we really must acknowledge that translators are important, and make sure we get the best.
NEW PRIZE
Harvill Secker and Waterstone's have teamed up to launch the Harvill Secker Young Translators' Prize. This year Spanish is the chosen language and entrants will be asked to translate a short story by the Argentinian writer Matías Néspolo. The winning entry will receive £1,000. To enter visit harvillseckeryoungtranslatorsprize.com
Tim Parks The Observer New Review 25 April 2010
Tuesday 6 April 2010
poetry month in America
Good Afternoon
I have come accross the website http://www.poets.org/ and to celebrate April as Poetry Month In America they have a poem a day. So far they have been very insightful and I thought that there would be some of you that would enjoy them too. You can sign up on the website to receive them by email or view them on the site itself. Nice poet profiles to go with them as well.
I have come accross the website http://www.poets.org/ and to celebrate April as Poetry Month In America they have a poem a day. So far they have been very insightful and I thought that there would be some of you that would enjoy them too. You can sign up on the website to receive them by email or view them on the site itself. Nice poet profiles to go with them as well.
Thursday 11 March 2010
mail art blog
Hi everyone her is a link to a mailart blog I have come across.
My plan for our art project is to be a bit more flexible either you can send submissions to me by post or email to me a scanned image with dimensions of 6x4 at 72dpi I will then start a new blog and put the scanned images there for your perusal
Have a look at this blog there are some really interesting images http://digitalmailart.blogspot.com/
Thank you Carole and Clare for the lovely work that you have already sent me
My plan for our art project is to be a bit more flexible either you can send submissions to me by post or email to me a scanned image with dimensions of 6x4 at 72dpi I will then start a new blog and put the scanned images there for your perusal
Have a look at this blog there are some really interesting images http://digitalmailart.blogspot.com/
Thank you Carole and Clare for the lovely work that you have already sent me
razzle dazzle
re: Michael's writing tips I would like to pose a question
Where would we be without razzle dazzle?
Deep and philosophical I know, but its all part of life's rich tapestry
Where would we be without razzle dazzle?
Deep and philosophical I know, but its all part of life's rich tapestry
Tuesday 9 March 2010
quotes on a theme of books
Some book themed quotations that are quite interesting!
Paula
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary
You can cover a great deal of country in books.
Andrew Lang (1844 - 1912)
There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.
Anna Quindlen (1953 - )
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Arnold Lobel
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
Austin Phelps
Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
Bell Hooks, O Magazine, December 2003
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832), Lacon, 1820
I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.
Charles De Secondat (1689 - 1755)
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.
Charles W. Eliot (1834 - 1926), The Happy Life, 1896
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), (Attributed)
It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.
Dame Rose Macaulay (1881 - 1958)
Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893 - 1957), The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964)
Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
Woe be to him that reads but one book.
George Herbert (1593 - 1633)
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Harold Bloom (1930 - ), O Magazine, April 2003
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Walden: Reading, 1854
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Henry James (1843 - 1916)
Paula
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary
You can cover a great deal of country in books.
Andrew Lang (1844 - 1912)
There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.
Anna Quindlen (1953 - )
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Arnold Lobel
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
Austin Phelps
Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
Bell Hooks, O Magazine, December 2003
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832), Lacon, 1820
I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.
Charles De Secondat (1689 - 1755)
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.
Charles W. Eliot (1834 - 1926), The Happy Life, 1896
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), (Attributed)
It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.
Dame Rose Macaulay (1881 - 1958)
Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893 - 1957), The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964)
Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
Woe be to him that reads but one book.
George Herbert (1593 - 1633)
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Harold Bloom (1930 - ), O Magazine, April 2003
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Walden: Reading, 1854
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Henry James (1843 - 1916)
Friday 5 March 2010
More writing tips
From the remarks in the Guardian, the ones I loved that don't crop up ad nauseum were:
Richard Ford - 'Marry [live with] somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.'
Michael Moorcock - 'Find an author you admire ... and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.' [I wouldn't go as far as copying, but to sit and take apart a story or novel by your favourite author - sentence by sentence and word by word - and examine how they create is a remarkable exercise. Doing this with Alice Munro stories taught me so much about 'show not tell' and building in unobtrusive backstory.]
Andrew Motion - 'Think with your senses as well as your brain.'
Will Self - 'Always carry a notebook.' [I also liked his: 'Stop reading fiction ... (assuming, that is, you've read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven't you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).' I don't completely agree, but I like his extreme stance.]
My favourite overall, was A. L. Kennedy's submission. She is an extremely intelligent, humane and ethical writer [and person], and was on the new [dumbed down?] BBC2 'Review Show' recently. Sadly, due largely to appalling chairing by Kirsty Wark, she struggled to be heard over the other shouty, run-of-the-mill, populist contributers.
My own guidelines (and 'No' I don't manage to stick to them) are:
1) WRITE! Apply bum to seat, preferably every day, and just write. Find a pattern, rhythm, schedule, whatever that works for you and stick to it - in fact defend it: defend your time and space (cf the Munro story 'The Office' about the woman who rents an office in order to get away from the demands of home) and write.
2) Cut, edit, read aloud (especially dialogue), put it in a drawer for three months, and then give it to a close friend or mentor to read. Repeat as necessary, especially cut and edit (especially adverbs, adjectives and cliches). NB If people keep saying that something does not work for them - they are probably right.
3) Try to stop work for the day at a point where things are going well, preferably where you know what you are going to do next; then you can continue your writing with enthusiasm the next day. NB I don't recommend this if your loved one is taking you away for a romantic trip. My friend Lou found herself (nearly) no longer engaged, as she spent the whole of a romantic weekend thinking about her story and just wanting to be back home and writing.
4) Have other outlets and activities: walk, meditate, listen to music, exercise, do yoga, swim, dance, have sex (I disagree with Colm Toibin). In fact, do anything to get the other bits of the brain working, as - once firing - they will probably solve any writing problems that you have.
5)Read widely, deeply and try to read outside your comfort zone. Read for form, structure and techniques as well as story.
Richard Ford - 'Marry [live with] somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.'
Michael Moorcock - 'Find an author you admire ... and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.' [I wouldn't go as far as copying, but to sit and take apart a story or novel by your favourite author - sentence by sentence and word by word - and examine how they create is a remarkable exercise. Doing this with Alice Munro stories taught me so much about 'show not tell' and building in unobtrusive backstory.]
Andrew Motion - 'Think with your senses as well as your brain.'
Will Self - 'Always carry a notebook.' [I also liked his: 'Stop reading fiction ... (assuming, that is, you've read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven't you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).' I don't completely agree, but I like his extreme stance.]
My favourite overall, was A. L. Kennedy's submission. She is an extremely intelligent, humane and ethical writer [and person], and was on the new [dumbed down?] BBC2 'Review Show' recently. Sadly, due largely to appalling chairing by Kirsty Wark, she struggled to be heard over the other shouty, run-of-the-mill, populist contributers.
My own guidelines (and 'No' I don't manage to stick to them) are:
1) WRITE! Apply bum to seat, preferably every day, and just write. Find a pattern, rhythm, schedule, whatever that works for you and stick to it - in fact defend it: defend your time and space (cf the Munro story 'The Office' about the woman who rents an office in order to get away from the demands of home) and write.
2) Cut, edit, read aloud (especially dialogue), put it in a drawer for three months, and then give it to a close friend or mentor to read. Repeat as necessary, especially cut and edit (especially adverbs, adjectives and cliches). NB If people keep saying that something does not work for them - they are probably right.
3) Try to stop work for the day at a point where things are going well, preferably where you know what you are going to do next; then you can continue your writing with enthusiasm the next day. NB I don't recommend this if your loved one is taking you away for a romantic trip. My friend Lou found herself (nearly) no longer engaged, as she spent the whole of a romantic weekend thinking about her story and just wanting to be back home and writing.
4) Have other outlets and activities: walk, meditate, listen to music, exercise, do yoga, swim, dance, have sex (I disagree with Colm Toibin). In fact, do anything to get the other bits of the brain working, as - once firing - they will probably solve any writing problems that you have.
5)Read widely, deeply and try to read outside your comfort zone. Read for form, structure and techniques as well as story.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)