Let's talk translations?

[takethewatch]

Does anyone have Opinions and/or Advice about translations to share? It's been a few years since my initial read-through of the Brick, and now that I have relapsed with a vengeance into this fandom, I am about due for another one (as soon as Life permits). I know not to read Denny--but I would love to see some discussion of the other translations out there (especially the new Donougher one) and their relative merits.

Comments

[sophia_sol]

What's so terrible about Hapgood in your opinion? I obviously don't have as much familiarity with different translations (or the original text) as you so I am probably missing something! I read Hapgood for my first time around and found her perfectly readable - and I mean, yes, there were bits where she was obviously missing the point with some wordplay or something, but I found it serviceable.

[tenlittlebullets]

All the archaism of Wilbour and then some, plus a generous helping of over-literal clunkiness that often crosses the line into outright inaccuracy. (My favorite has always been her rendering of Cosette saying to Valjean, "Avec ce machin-là sur la tête, j'ai l'air de Madame Chien-Fou!"--no, Hapgood, it doesn't mean 'machine.' The French have a breathtaking assortment of words for 'thingamawhatsit.')

[sophia_sol]

Hah, fair enough! I don't personally look on archaism as a negative, but over-literal and inaccurate is definitely a fault. And oh dear, that translation to machine...!

[tenlittlebullets]

My issue with the archaic-sounding translations is that Hugo doesn't write like that--he's very direct! I can put up with it when it's about par with the general levels of fussiness in Victorian-era English prose, but stuff like Hapgood's awkward use of 'thou' drives me right up the wall.

[sophia_sol]

And again I will concede the point! I do not know nearly enough french to be able to judge Hugo's levels of archaism for myself, and if Hapgood goes too far beyond him then that is another point against her, yes.

I'd forgotten about the way she uses thou! The thing about thou is that if only she were CONSISTENT in her usage it would be a useful way of translating tu vs vou, BUT SHE IS NOT CONSISTENT. So it just comes across as awkward and makes things more confusing instead of less.

[tenlittlebullets]

Yeah, I guess it seems like kind of a snotty reason to have such a hate-on for Wilbour and Hapgood, BUT I CANNOT GET OVER IT. It's the ugly flip side of my unbridled joy at diving into the French version of the Brick and discovering how much cleaner and more elegant Hugo's prose was than I'd thought: an eternal grudge against the translators who'd led me to believe otherwise. (Which is dumb, because F/MA was my first translation, but I think F/MA is about as good as you can get without going the Donougher route--my issue with Wilbour and Hapgood is that they make it worse than it has to be, and IIRC Wilbour was much more popular for Brick quotes in fandom back in Ye Olde Days Of Yore when I was forming ~opinions~ than it is now. So I get irrationally hacked off about both of them, but more so Hapgood because she's not even accurate a lot of the time.)

[sophia_sol]

No, it doesn't seem snotty to me. I mean, from what you say, these translators are misleading the readers about an essential aspect of how the book reads!

I own FMA and enjoyed that translation too - though I had my nitpicks with it as well iirc. And of late I have been eyeing Donougher in a "do I really need to own multiple copies of the brick" "but FOOTNOTES" sort of way. And given your comments in your first reply to this post I am finding myself more curious to check out what Donougher's translation is like.

[esteliel]

This translation discussion is so fascinating and helpful to me! When I let a friend drag me into this fandom, I asked him what translation he would recommend since I was kind of overwhelmed by the ~500 ebooks on amazon, and got Hapgood as a recommendation for a start. And I don't actually have any complaints reading it - I've genuinely enjoyed it, and the archaic language hasn't bothered me since I obviously didn't have anything to compare it to, but when I started writing fic and reread chapters for that, I've also looked at the original French of whatever scene I was looking at, and was struck by how easy it was to understand that. It would make sense though if the original is a lot less archaic sounding than the translation. (I read French every day for work, but that's just bug reports - it's probably been 15 years or more since I read a French novel in school. /o\)

I wonder if there is any sort of French "school edition" that comes with a ton of footnotes and vocabulary lists for the more unusual words? (And I love how this fandom makes me actually want to go and buy a French novel after so many years of being glad that I wouldn't have to do any more French.)

And I hear you on the use of "thou". On the one hand, I really really love that distinction in speech between a formal and a familiar address - German does the same as French there so it feels natural to me and I love the way you can theoretically use it to use direct speech to denote respect/disrespect and shifts thereof without any further explanation. I've tried to go with her use of "thou" in one story and found it just very painful amd awkward an experiment, and it left me with the decision to not try that again because I just can't see it working. How do other translations handle that? Do they simply go with footnotes or with explanations in the narrative like "...had switched to an informal address?"

[tenlittlebullets]

If there's a school edition, it's probably abridged. :( The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition is heavily annotated, but mostly with historical/classical references and errata from the rough drafts. It's also gorgeous, leatherbound and printed on Bible paper, and predictably expensive.

I guess what I'd recommend for getting into the French is to find an online edition and read the scenes you already know pretty well in English, which should allow you to get back into the swing of the grammar and vocabulary enough to start on the less-familiar scenes + a WordReference tab. Then gradually wean yourself off the dictionary tab and move to a print edition. That, plus translations of short scenes from the rough drafts that had never existed in English before, was pretty much how I learned French (so I am biased in recommending it, but hey, it worked for at least one person!).

Donougher, which is the translation I'm currently reading, handles T/V distinction both via footnotes and in text, with phrases like "...was no longer being insultingly familiar with him." It's awkward, but it's impossible to make it not awkward, so I'm glad she's at least being thorough about it.

[esteliel]

Oh my god, you shouldn't have mentioned that - that edition looks gorgeous! And it's only 57€ on amazon.fr, and there are a few auctions on ebay.fr... Maybe something that gorgeous will be incentive enough to get me to read a French novel again after 17 years - or at least the chapters most relevant to whatever I'm writing at the time.

And the Donougher way still sounds somewhat awkward, but like the better alternative - after all, I am already aware that I am reading a translation, so just give me all the footnotes!

I've been thinking about this quite a bit because I really do like the way vouz/tu is at once so simple and so powerful in the way it denotes shifts in respect - going from the formal to the informal is such a slap in the face if it is done without invitation to do so or as a sign of affection. And usually with fic in English there is no need to think about that at all for me, but since I enjoy the way Hugo utilizes it so much, I also don't want to ignore it, which leaves the same sort of problem all of his translators face, I guess. But I experimented with Hapgood's "thou" once, and that's just not an alternative, I think it's really the most awkward way of dealing with it (maaaaybe, if it is just one sentence... but an entire conversation? Never again). In the end, the Donougher way of using phrases to describe changes in the mode of address probably is the least awkward you can get in a text.

[cahn]

On my last reread I did most of it in Hapgood (because it was free to put on my kindle, which is much lighter than my Fahnestock/MacAfee), hit Javert Off the Track (which I, uh, may have had virtually memorized off the F/MA translation), noped out of there, and finished off the last piece in F/MA. And I was shocked and dismayed by how much more readable F/MA was; it was really surprising to me. I agree, Hapgood is serviceable, but F/MA was way easier to get through, and I'm a bit bitter because I think some of the parts I thought were hard slogging would have been much less of a slog in F/MA.

[sophia_sol]

...all of a sudden I'm making a connection with my own experience. My first read was Hapgood and I found it tough going in places but enjoyed it anyways. My second read a year or so later was FMA and I found it a much easier read - but I assumed it was just because I'd done it once before and also had spent a year in the fandom, and those combined factors made it easier. I'm thinking I didn't place nearly enough emphasis on the difference in translation!