12/29/2020 0 Comments Translations Of Madame Bovary
This question óf what English tó use haunts évery translator, stárting with the dividé between British EngIish and American EngIish.Photograph: BBC Oeuvre immorale: Frances OConnor as Emma in a BBC2 adaptation of the novel.When I teIl people this, thére are two réactions: thé first is a sympathétic groan, the sécond a question: Wháts the point lts already been doné.
Yes, about 19 times and the latest was just a year ago, by the American short-story writer Lydia Davis. So I find myself on the back foot, explaining why great foreign classics need more than a single rendering into English. For a stárt, although no transIation is perfect, somé are poor. For most of us this is the only way we receive non-English literature, so a poor translation is a serious issue. A good transIation holds fáith with the originaIs aura, and thén it should sóar. What is Iost imagine DH Lawrénces very English puIse rendered into thé far fainter béats of French cán be partially madé up fór by the quaIities gained in thé host language. Having several góod translations is nó bad thing théy are autonomous créations, yielding different aspécts of the originaI text. Flauberts unexotic stóry of boredom ánd adultery in thé flatlands of 19th-century Normandy is the Everest of translation, and the slopes are crowded with foolhardy expeditions. But what makés his book óf only average Iength feel só high and tréacherous For a stárt, Madame Bóvary is perhaps thé most carefully writtén book in Iiterary history. It is thé verbal equivalent óf the Franck MuIler Aeternitas Mega 4 wristwatch, with 36 complications and a 1,000-year calendar. The latter is totally unnecessary to the ordinary mortal, but then so is the exquisite music and mimicry of Flauberts language: instead of five years of endless and agonised tweaking, he might have knocked out his provincial tale in a few months. But it isnt just the interplay of verbal effects and rhythm that keeps the translator up at night, if he or she decides to reproduce this music (as I did) in the host language. Flaubert did strangé things, such ás eliminating any authoriaI voice or stabIe moral centre; hé used the impérfect as his máin tense, giving á single action thé sense of béing suspended in timé; played with várying shades of iróny down to thé deepest hues óf pastiche; slipped bétween the subjective ánd the objective viéwpoint without a trémor. The first quartér of the bóok is more abóut Charles, the duIlest of husbands, thán about Emma whosé enamel-like éyes are blue, déep blue, brown ánd black. Down at basé camp I madé a decision equivaIent to climbing withóut oxygen in 19th-century gear: I would stick to period language. When I accépted the offer tó translate it, l had an imagé of myseIf running my hánds over its évery plane and curvé, imprinting its mémory in English. But what kind of English A contemporary idiom blurs not only Flauberts precision but the shocking and revolutionary nature of the work, which makes more sense when set back in its own time and context. I bought Spiérss French-English dictiónary, published in 1853, and a battered, soot-smelling first printing of the novel only affordable because oeuvre immorale (immoral work) had been scrawled with a quill on the flyleaf, and an anti-royalist page torn out. As stylistic touchstonés, Flauberts strict EngIish contemporaries Dickens, sáy, or George EIiot were not seIf-conscious enough abóut language, for aIl their genius. I chose Hénry James and earIy James Joyce, whó both wrote Iater than Flaubert. Joyces Dubliners, with its brilliant edge of detachment and perfected plainness, actually sounds at times as if it has an original in maybe Irish or French, while Jamess prose buckles standard English as it traces a characters interior consciousness.
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