Back to Blog
Another word for repertoire5/4/2023 ![]() Similarly, the 1871 translator of Persuasion strengthens the wording of Captain Benwick’s feelings for his lost fiancée, expanding Austen’s quite sparse sentences and replacing love for attachment. In Darcy’s first proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice, there are three different translations of “liked me”, and also three variations of “in love with”, in both instances spanning the whole scale of emotions. 4 Even “admire” (21) can become “in love”, 5 while Austen’s own “in love” (21, 22, 193) may be toned down to “really fond of”, a phrase that thus seems to do duty for liking as well as for loving. Sometimes, a mere “like” (14, 190) is translated as “in love with”, or at least as “fond of”. One area where the differing choice of words is conspicuous is the vocabulary of love. ![]() As observed also by David Bellos, it is almost certain that no two translators would come up with exactly the same translation of a given text. Evidently, a translator has a variety of solutions to choose from for any text, for every sentence, or even every word. 2 It is a good image insofar as the clothes can be changed, the skin cannot. Walter Benjamin described the language of the original text as the skin of a fruit, while in translation, the relationship between story and language is looser, like clothes on a body. None of the translations is positively wrong: they just reflect the possibilities inherent in any phrase when transferred to another language. 1 Whether Elizabeth played “nicely”, “very well” or “quite well” is hard to tell from this comparison, but Austen’s original text is “Her performance was pleasing, though by no means capital” (25). Merete Alfsen says she played “nicely, but in no way outstandingly”. The third variant, by Eivind and Elizabeth Hauge, is “quite well, although it was in no way anything special”. But the second translator, Lalli Knutsen claims that she sang and played “very well, but not extraordinarily”. How well did she play and sing? According to the first translator, Alf Harbitz, she “sang nicely, but really nothing more”. A curious and illustrative example of the choices of translation is found in the description of Elizabeth Bennet performing at a party at Lucas Lodge in i, 6 of Pride and Prejudice.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |