I hate it when translators mess with your head.

[elfs]

I'm reading "Introduction to Japanese Literature," which indexes its Kanji using SKIP. They're direct, educational renditions of Natsumi Soseki's Ten Nights, with translations on the facing pages. In the introduction to this introduction Giles Murray, the translator, states "The translations follow the Japanese scrupulously. I have striven for direct semantic purity, omitting nothing and taking nothing away."

Which is why the first sentence of the book annoys me. The sentence reads, "こんな夢を見た," konna yume wo mitta. The best translation I can come up with is "I saw a dream like this:" Not a bad opening for a 19th century Poe-esque horror story. A little ideomatic, but I get the picture.

What does Mr. Murray do with it? "I had a dream."

Which is also not a bad opening for a Poe-esque horror story. But I would argue that it is not a scrupulous, semantically pure translation. A little ideomatic, I think.

I can't tell if he's trying to put me on my toes, or what. Actually, the story's pretty nifty. And the Kanji education is amazing.

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I understand that translation is a hard task, and I tend to take some liberties with translation myself. I think the matter is more clear-cut here, though.

My problem is simply with the word konna, which is an adverb meaning "like this" or "of this kind." There are only three words in that sentence, if you include the verb-object and past-tense markers as part of their words: (this kind of) (dream (vo)) (see (pt)).

To me, the author's intent is clear. "I saw a dream like this" is one way to put it. I would even have accepted "I had a dream like this." Dropping the adverb completely from the translation, I feel, changes the subtle nuance of the opening. In my reading, the author is not completely confident that he is relaying the dream correctly and without mismemory. He may even be deceitful. Giles' translation doesn't give that kind of room.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Well, I took those three words and translated them into Hebrew, to see if they worked out as unambiguously in the other language I feel comfortable doing this in.

this kind of - כזה (kazeh)
dream - חלום (chalom)
see (pt) - ראה (ra'ah)

In Hebrew, the dream and see are pretty clear (although they could be used to engineer ambiguities). The "this kind of", however, proves my point. ראה כזה חלום could mean "he saw this kind of a dream"

הלך ברחוב. חזר הביתה. ראה קומקום. ראה חלום כזה.

or "what a big dream he had"

ראיתי אותו הולך ברחוב, בנאדם שבור. חזר הביתה האיש, נשכב במיטתו ופתאום נפתח לפניו עולם ענק: ראה כזה חלום. כזה, שלא היה ולא יהיה.

or "he saw it in a sort of dream".

הוא הלך ברחוב, חשב על אשתו החתול. החתול הזה אהב להסתתר. לא אהב שרואים אותו, לא אהב להיות חלק מעולם היום. האיש שלו הלך לישון, ראה אותו בכזה חלום.

There are other options, all of which rely on the context. The author's intent is explicated more than in just the words and grammar - the language is bigger than that.

(oh, bother. Now I want to continue the three sentences I started and find out what happened to the dreamer dude. But I've got a pile of pages to translate that is taller than I am. Legal statements... ...the context is going to be very challenging. I really hope no lawyer comes up and challenges my translations, which take into account context and slang, based on a dictionary word-for-word piecing-together-of-meanings!)