Lost in Translation?
Michael Gove in The Times yesterday speculated that "reading great literature in
translation involves a loss of nuance, a sacrifice of subtlety, which
few will admit to. It is not in the translators' interests to
acknowledge what's lost in the process, and neither is it in the
authors' . . . surely the suppleness
of language in the original doesn't come through in the same way as
when we're reading our mother tongue".
While acknowledging that reading a book in translation will not be exactly the same experience as reading in in the original language, on the whole I believe that the differences may not be large as Michael Gove fears, and in any case, will probably not matter all that much.
Last year I read the John E Woods of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain and a few months later I read Polish writer Pawel Huelle's "prequel" to Magic Mountain, Castorp which was translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones. What struck me is the complete consistency in "voice" between the two books. The Hans Castorp in Magic Mountain is precisely the same person in Castorp. This says much about the skill of the translators of course, but the consistency of style between the two books suggests to me that not a lot was lost in the translation of either book.
I reflected on Michael Gove's article and as a regular reader of translated literature came up with some thoughts of my own:
- It is not unreasonable to believe that a translated work is in some sense a new literary creation which stands in its own right, but this does not in itself devalue the reading experience. Where a skilled translator has brought all his or her skills, experience and artistic ability to the work of translation, the work will not necessarily be less valuable than the original. It is just different to one degree or another.
- In some ways, translations could be seen like a different production of the same play. We do not quibble at the different production values but see them as bringing a different light to the work. Scott Moncrieff's translations of Proust are very different to the Allen Lane/Penguin editions which have multiple translators, but on the whole the same Proustian voice remains although the colours and tones of the text may be different.
- Sometimes a new translation can re-invigorate a work. It is widely accepted that Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote has effectively re-launched the work and enabled new generations to see its importance as "the first modern novel".
- Sometimes a translation can achieve transcendence and stand as a major work in its own right. One need only consider the King James Bible for example.
I am currently reading Adam Thirlwell's fascinating book on the art of translation The Delighted States and recommend this to anyone who wants to understand more about the history of translation and the way in which it has been conducted over the centuries. Thirlwell's survey of work in translation reveals the artistry involved in translation when "occasionally the sense and its connotations has to alter, so that the rhytyms of the words, the sentences' musicality can still remain".
On the whole I feel that Michael Gove need not worry about losing much in translation. It would be very sad to miss out on great European literature in order as he puts it, "to revel in the work of a second division Brit".
