忠実な翻訳についてのパネル討論

意見、皮肉、態度

1. b) Whether a translation should stay close to the original or read smoothlyNaomi は、翻訳は忠実であるべきか、読みやすくあるべきかを尋ねています。
2. c) That Naomi is right and he is eager to speak彼は、少しの間だけ控えると冗談を言っていますが、それは先に話したくてたまらないことを認めています。
3. a) She finds it charming but mocks it for ignoring the reader彼女はそれを魅力的だと言いますが、居心地の悪い家についての皮肉なコメントから、彼女がそれは読者を軽視していると考えているのがわかります。
4. d) Pleases himself rather than the readerそのような翻訳者は、読者を助けたのではなく、自分を喜ばせただけだと述べています。
5. c) Every translation is shaped by two people, so it is never untouched原作は翻訳者によって必ず変えられるので、両方の名前が並ぶのが適切だという意味です。
6. b) Spoken dialogue in novels彼は、会話文は自然に聞こえなければならず、直訳では法律文書のように聞こえると認めています。
7. d) That she replaced a local word with a plain English one彼女は、地元の fog を表す言葉を普通の fog に置き換えたため、読者は何かを失ったと考えています。
8. a) He is joking about protecting his image as stubbornこれは冗談です。彼は頑固だという評判を大切にしていて、同意してしまうとそれが損なわれるのです。

重要な細部

1. twenty / 20Naomi は、彼を中世詩に20年を費やした人物として紹介しています。
2. footnote脚注が必要な冗談は、もはや冗談ではないと述べています。
3. footnotes小説の中の人々は、脚注のようには話さないと述べています。
4. brave彼らはそれを、好意的に「勇敢だ」と評すと述べています。
5. fogその地元の言葉は、ある種類の fog を指していました。
6. French彼女は、フランス語の読者が笑うのと同じ場面で、英語の読者にも笑ってほしいと思っています。

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.