Translation

I am reading Nobel Literature prizewinner Patrick Modiano’s “Scene of the Crime. It has a distant, Proustian tone that produces a slightly off-centre effect. But, in fact, I think what I am enjoying most is the translation from the French by Mark Polizzotti.

I enjoy reading books in translation.  There is something I love about the style that translators all seem to adopt whatever the language of the original.  Translators always seem to produce something slightly off-kilter, almost delightfully clumsy and, in seeking clarity, they always seem to end up with something that is English but Not Quite Natural.  It is almost like a separate language – a particular dialect of English at least.  It produces a slightly echoey effect as though I am being waved to as through a glass darkly or read to gently through a muffled brass trumpet. There is a hollow, distant effect that I remember from when I was ill as a child.  Books in French or German, I could probably make out for myself, but it is the translation itself which I love.  In those particular languages, I can often make out the unusual phrase that the translator is trying to get across from the original.  I can see the original intention even if the words themselves are too recherché for my limited vocabulary. I can see the effort that the translator is making to get le mot juste that approximates to the original.  Generally, they don’t quite succeed but fair play to them for trying. Contemporary or particular cultural references can become almost untranslatable without an accompanying paragraph for context so they are often left dangling in mid-air for the readers to make out as they might.

I have a particular penchant for Russian and Eastern European languages in translation. Because I have directed a few Russian plays, I am excited by the way the translation seems to underline the universal sense of existential angst that is contained in the body of the work. It distances us from the action and thus we see it more clearly. Chekov, Arbuzov – I wonder if I would feel the same wonder if I could read them in the original?   I could say the same about Ibsen, Garcia Lorca and a hundred others.

The consequence is that I have started trying to emulate this style in my own writing.  I am writing as though my words have been translated by someone unfamiliar with English. This produces something slightly arch and flat at the same time, with emotions not quite mapping on to the words we would generally use to describe them. I try to avoid current references and usages as though I am uncertain of the language and intention of English. For me, it does that thing of providing distance and requires my reader to concentrate just a little more on the meaning.  It reminds us all that meaning is relative and what you understand by a word is not quite the same as what I believe it to be.  It demands that I, as a writer, think more of what I am trying to get across and the precise effect a group of words will have on an audience.