Karin wrote:
> Anyway, a woman in the audience said something along
the lines of, "Whenever I read a translation, I feel like
there's something missing." ... She said that she had been
thinking especially of the books she'd read by Henning
Mankell. She said she didn't feel she understood the culture
he was writing about and that there was "something
missing."
>
> I thought that was interesting, because after
reading three of his books (Sidetracked and The Fifth Woman,
translated by Steven T. Murraym and Firewall, translated by
Ebba Segerberg), I'd decided I wouldn't bother looking for
any more. It's hard to describe, but I'd found his tone
rather too flat. She and I seemed to be talking about the
same thing, but she put it down to the translation and I to
the writer.
I find books in translation a bit patchy. I think the extra
layer of the translation gets in the way and makes me feel a
bit distanced from the story and characters sometimes. That's
not a very good way of explaining it but it's all I can come
up with. I think the translation is a big factor and if I
don't particularly like one book I try and find one by a
different translator if at all possible. I find Henning
Mankell rather flat too Karin (although there was a lot about
the one I read that I did like), and because there were parts
I did like, I put the flatness down to the translation rather
than the author :o) Interesting that you should get that
feeling after reading two different translators.
Two books in translation I really enjoyed were Arnaldur
Indridason's JAR CITY (Finland) and Massimo Carlotto's THE
COLOMBIAN MULE (Italy). The Indridason is a police procedural
and the Carlotto is a PI. Both would qualify as hard-boiled.
The Carlotto especially gave me no feeling of the
'twice-removed' feeling.
A panel I went to at Harrogate with 4 Europena crime fiction
authors on talked about this issue. All of them are published
in a number of languages and, on the whole they have to rely
on their translators to do a good job as they (the authors)
have no say in the choice of translator, nor (mostly) any
contact with the translator (although there were a couple of
exceptions to this). Where they DID have contact with the
translators, these seemed to be the most successful
translations.
Cheers,
Donna
-- http://freespace.virgin.net/donna.moore
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 17 Oct 2004 EDT