Quote:
Originally posted by Mike Slippkauskas:
Janet,
You know I love you from afar but your comments on the translatability of complex Latinate sentences into English seem doctrinaire, almost silly. Particularly when one considers that Proust modeled his prose style on that of John Ruskin. Almost everyone agrees that Proust in English reads wonderfully, even French scholars.
I've looked at the new Penguin tag-team translations of Proust. In almost every passage I've compared, I prefer the original Moncrieff (revised by Enright, etc.)
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Mike,
I know some pretty sharp bi-lingual French writers and editors (in Paris) who agree with me. It was like the tablets of Moses that Scott Moncrieff was untouchable.
We can't read English that takes a whole page to complete one sentence. Italian does that sort of thing with more ease. Natalia Ginzburg's "Lessico Famigliare" is similarly constructed and works beautifully in Italian. In English, it was necessary to break the sentences in order to retain the freshness.
Lydia Davis says:
Scott Moncrieff had considerable persuasive skill as a writer, his version was the first and for a very long time the only English translation available, and Proust's novel is powerful enough to shine through almost any translation: for these reasons, the Scott Moncrieff version has become deeply entrenched, and the experience of reading Proust has been, for readers confined to English, inextricably identified with Scott Moncrieff's flowing but misrepresentative version. For them, Scott Moncrieff's style is the voice of Proust.
But it is not. Proust, in French, is plainer, and clearer.
I don't like the idea of several translators either. It must be one mind. Perhaps I attributed the translation to Christopher Prendergast, the editor, and was in error. I know some fine translations which are consistently the product of a good writer of English and a bilingual native speaker, but they have collaborated for the entire book. Perhaps Christopher Prendergast is the unifying voice?
I had the same experience with Arthur Waley's translation of "The Book of Genji". I learned to love Genji through Waley and was slowly persuaded to give the later and more austere Seindensticker a chance.
Janet
[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 29, 2008).]