I attended a Bouchercon panel featuring Jose Latour, a Cuban
who wrote Outcast in English and subsequently translated it
into Spanish, and wrote Havana is Burning (I think that's the
new one) in Spanish and translated it into English. English,
of course, is his second language.
Anyway, a woman in the audience said something along the
lines of, "Whenever I read a translation, I feel like there's
something missing." The discussion that followed brought up
some examples of bad translation and some examples of things
that are difficult to translate.
When I later found myself sitting behind the same woman, I
asked her what exactly she had meant. 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.
Other people here have said they enjoyed Mankell, and I
wonder what you thought about the writing style or tone. How
does Mankell come across in Swedish? Is there something
missing in the English?
Karin
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 16 Oct 2004 EDT