Back from the Conference on the Fantastic

[womzilla]

Haven't caught up on my flist, but I wanted to post a link to this nifty bit of work that I saw before I left and that I haven't seen widely linked. I referred to it several times over the course of the Conference, most particularly in discussion after a paper on the two (authorized) Mandarin Chinese translations of The Lord of the Rings.

Great Expectations, by Dickens Charles

Great Expectations is a novel which has been historically acclaimed as a portrait of the Victorian society of Eng-land, and of the social mobility that was taking place during this time of upheaval. Named for the autocratic monarch of the country at that time, this period was marked by a gradual liberalisation of the native warlords (who began taking on a more political than military role) and of the gender-segregated and caste-based society. The author of the novel, Dickens Charles (Man or Male-person, a common Eng-land name), was one of the most representative writers of Eng-land.

Translation is difficult. Dealing with names in a translated work is one of the most difficult parts--how do you properly convey which names are common (Rachel) and which are exotic (Rivka), which are sexy (Lolita) and which aren't (Dolores)? And dealing with names in a work with as many carefully considered neologisms as Tolkien's oeuvre would be enough to drive one to madness.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There have been a number of good papers over the years on translating Tolkien, and the degree to which the translator wants to, or should, copy or reproduce the flavor of the original (which is faithful, but will read as alien in the target language where it's natural in the English), find a local equivalent (which is not always possible, and sometimes carries odd connotations even when it is, e.g. "Gau" is a German word perfectly equivalent to "Shire", but it's been tainted by the Nazis), or just give up and tell the story in plain language. Archaisms and names cause the biggest problems here.

What's in a Name?

[(Anonymous)]

I've come upon French and Italian translations of *Gone with the Wind.*

In the French, Scarlett O'Hara is "Scarlett"; however, in Italian, she is "Rossella."

The flipside of this might be Ernest Hemingway's translation of the Loyalists's Spanish into English in *For Whom the Bell Tolls* where he uses "thee" and "thou" and can't get too vulgar as in "I obscenity in thy mother's milk."

There was no Charles on the throne when Dickens was born, nor when he wrote *Great Expectations.* Who did the translator think provided the "Victorian" in "Victorian society," if not Spooner's queer old dean who would never taste two worms and have to leave immediately by the town drain?

When Mr. Wopsle takes to the stage in *Great Expectations,* he renames himself "Waldengarver." I'd like to have seen that production of *Hamlet.*