Debat panel tentang terjemahan yang setia

Pendapat, ironi, dan sikap

1. b) Whether a translation should stay close to the original or read smoothlyNaomi bertanya apakah terjemahan harus setia atau mudah dibaca.
2. c) That Naomi is right and he is eager to speakIa bercanda bahwa ia hanya akan menahan diri sebentar, yang mengakui bahwa ia ingin bicara lebih dulu.
3. a) She finds it charming but mocks it for ignoring the readerIa menyebutnya menawan, tetapi komentar ironisnya tentang rumah yang tidak nyaman menunjukkan bahwa menurutnya terjemahan itu mengabaikan pembaca.
4. d) Pleases himself rather than the readerIa mengatakan penerjemah seperti itu tidak membantu pembaca tetapi memuji dirinya sendiri.
5. c) Every translation is shaped by two people, so it is never untouchedMaksudnya, naskah asli selalu diubah oleh penerjemah, sehingga kedua nama itu pantas disebut.
6. b) Spoken dialogue in novelsIa mengakui bahwa dialog harus terdengar alami, dan terjemahan harfiah akan terdengar seperti dokumen hukum.
7. d) That she replaced a local word with a plain English oneIa mengganti kata setempat untuk kabut dengan kata biasa fog, dan menurutnya pembaca kehilangan sesuatu.
8. a) He is joking about protecting his image as stubbornItu lelucon: ia menghargai reputasinya sebagai orang keras kepala, dan setuju akan merusaknya.

Detail penting

1. twenty / 20Naomi memperkenalkannya sebagai orang yang menghabiskan dua puluh tahun untuk puisi abad pertengahan.
2. footnoteIa mengatakan lelucon yang memerlukan catatan kaki bukan lagi lelucon.
3. footnotesIa mengatakan orang dalam novel tidak berbicara seperti catatan kaki.
4. braveIa mengatakan mereka menyebutnya, dengan ramah, sebagai berani.
5. fogKata setempat itu untuk satu jenis kabut.
6. FrenchIa ingin pembaca Inggris tertawa pada saat pembaca Prancis akan tertawa.

Naomi: Welcome to Word for Word. Tonight we ask a question that translators have argued about, politely and otherwise, for centuries: should a translation be faithful, or should it be readable? With me are Doctor Fabian Roux, who has spent twenty years translating medieval poetry, and Tola Adeyemi, who translates contemporary novels. Fabian, I suspect you'll want to go first.

Fabian: I shall resist the suspicion, though only for a sentence. My view is that a translator is a guest in someone else's house, and one does not rearrange the furniture. If the poet chose an awkward word, the awkwardness is part of the poem, and a translator who smooths it away has not helped the reader but flattered himself.

Tola: What a charming picture, and how convenient that the guest never has to explain to anyone why the house is so uncomfortable. I'd say the reader is the one who matters. If a joke needs a footnote, it has stopped being a joke. My job is to make an English reader laugh at the same moment a French reader would, even if I have to build a different joke to do it.

Fabian: Build a different joke, and you have written a different book. Whose name goes on the cover?

Tola: Both of ours, which is rather the point. Nobody pretends the novel reached you untouched. The only question is whether the touching was done with skill.

Naomi: Let me press you on that, Tola. Isn't there a danger that a fluent translation persuades readers that the foreign author was simply an English writer in disguise?

Tola: A real danger, and a flattering one for English. I try to leave a little strangeness in, a rhythm or an image that an English writer wouldn't quite choose, so that the reader senses a different mind at work.

Naomi: Fabian, is there any case in which you'd concede?

Fabian: Several, and I'm irritated to say so. Dialogue, for one. People in a novel do not speak like footnotes. If a character in the original swears, hesitates or sulks, the English must do likewise, and a literal rendering would make her sound like a legal document. I'd also concede that my own early translations, which I regarded as models of loyalty, are now unreadable. My students describe them, kindly, as brave.

Tola: I'll make a concession in return. When I worked on a novel set in a fishing village, I replaced a local word for one particular kind of fog with plain English fog. It was neat, it was fluent, and I have regretted it ever since. The reader lost something they would have enjoyed learning.

Naomi: So you've both moved towards the middle.

Fabian: Please don't say that in public. It would ruin my reputation for obstinacy.

Tola: Mine is already ruined, so I'm happy to be quoted. The truth is that the best translations feel faithful in spirit and free in detail, and nobody has ever agreed on which is which.

Naomi: On that note of cheerful disagreement, we'll take a short break.