Literature in Translation

Literature in translation

 ... is a consummation devoutly to be un-wished.

I once picked up a copy of War and Peace at the Christmas Bazaar Book Sale.  It was incredibly inexpensive (a dollar? two?), in good condition, and I had never read it.  Of course, it has a reputation of being Great Literature and REALLY LONG.

I got the book home and read a few pages before I had to take a trip.  Rather than bring the book with me, I thought I might download a digital copy onto my phone.  I was a little surprised at the number of different available copies there were and their prices were non-zero.  But what really struck me was their lengths.  None of the copies were the same number of pages.  This difference was not due to typesetting, as the app would apply its own font size, chosen by the user.  So I did a little research into why these versions were different and I found... translation. (Boo! Hiss!)

War and Peace was written in Russian (primarily) and French.  There have been a dozen translations into English.  (The first English translation was of a version translated into French first!)  So, if you read the Bromfield translation and I read the Dunnigan translation, have we read the same book?  Certainly, the plot elements are probably the same (though Bromfield is 400 pages shorter), but is Literature just Plot?

Of course not.

Literature is writing.  Writing is words.  And words don't translate.  Just take a word and put it back and forth through Google Translate.  If it ever reaches a "steady-state" (Engineering!) what are the chances the final word is the same as your starting word?  Or even a synonym?  And if synonyms are good enough (and that's all Translate will get you), then why lionize any work of literature, any collection of words?  Or any writer?  If Tolstoy's War and Peace is "a classic of world literature", then why isn't Ann Dunnigan's War and Peace?  Or SparkNotes' War and Peace?  They all tell the same story.

If there's a line from War and Peace that you like, Tolstoy didn't write that.  He wrote something similar in Russian or French.  Are you a fan of Hamlet's line, "Should I kill myself?"  Abraham Lincoln's "87 years ago"?  Of course not.  It's the actual words the authors chose, not the "Platonic Ideal" situation about which they were writing.

"But Dan!," I hear you cry. "Then you'll miss out on Great Literature!" Oh, no I won't. I read English.

"The majesty and grandeur of the English language is the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of Men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative, and musical mixtures of sounds." - George Bernard Shaw

And I've not yet read all it has to offer. I still have three Dickens' to read, all of Fitzgerald, etc., etc. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, "When you're tired of English, you're tired of Literature." I'll never know the plot of Les Miserables? So what? I've got the allegory of Moby Dick to wade through.

I guess it goes without saying that I've got a copy of War and Peace, unread.  Cheap.

A Cerebite Aside

At this point in the saga, Cerebus has a head cold and is all stuffed up. Dave Sim writes dialog phonetically throughout the series. The next issue is not going to be pretty, hence, the title. If you were to translate this, you would need the other language to have the idiom, "When the sh*t hits the fan" and all that it means and no more. You would also have to write it as if it was said by someone with a cold. That seems more difficult than it's worth.

Post Script

What works have been entirely translated into English except for their titles (which never are)?  I can think of only two:  Les Miserables and Mein Kampf.