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By cover, by content...
Oct. 19th, 2011 02:48 pmMy first conscious realization that books were "fallible," in a sense that transcended the rare simple typographical error—I'm talking about significant muckups or sentences that made no sense at all, where the faulty component in the book–reader system was not the reader—was the night before this one mechanics exam in college, where repeated attempts to derive a particular equation came up short. I kept coming up with a factor squared, while the book (mistakenly) insisted the factor existed only in the first power in the expression.
Later, after returning from the Soviet Union, my brief career at a publishing house made me uncomfortably aware of just how many errors can creep into a book.
Translation errors are legion, of course, but not all of them have to be funny to be noticeable. And I recall the first time I noticed a problem with a "professionally written" translation.
In 1992, if memory serves as to the year, I was in Moscow attending a computer show and telling the world about the wonder that was OS/2. While walking the streets of the city after the show had closed for the day, I happened to see a paperback on sale at a newsstand, featuring a lurid drawing of an amply endowed woman with very hard eyes, one hand covering the nipple of one breast as the fingertips played with a diamond pendant that hung around her neck, and a half-exposed nipple peeking out from behind an open zipper.
The title of the book, Тварь, was a word unknown to me at the time. I didn't even look to see who had written it. However, having had my fill of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn and the rest of that serious gang, I was curious to see what kind of new fiction swamp the fall of the USSR had spawned.
When I did start to read the book, it took about a page and a half for me to flip back to the cover, look at the author's name, and experience an "Aha!" moment.
Мики Спиллейн.
Or, as the rest of us Americans know him, Mickey Spillane, the originator of fictional detective Mike Hammer and oftimes lite beer aficionado. I had bought a translation of two of the Hammer novels.
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out which book Тварь—which means a creature or a beast in Russian—was supposed to be. Eventually, I figured out it was The Twisted Thing, which is not one of my favorite Hammer outings. The second novel in the volume was a Hammer novel titled Большая охота, which I figured was Spillane's The Big Kill. Neither title translation was very good, in my opinion, but titles tend to be like that.
Not being a native Russian, I cannot tell you how corny (or, perhaps, not) the translations sounded in places (especially when Hammer would "pull out his cannon" and point it at bad guys). But there was one place where the translation just didn't feel right.
It comes just at the very beginning of The Big Kill (which I read first), which finds Hammer in a bar on "one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world" and "the rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat."
A woman described as a "tomato" in English, rendered "мулатка" in Russian ("mulatto," back-translated, though no Internet reference I found suggested any racial subtext relating "tomato" to anything other than "woman") comes up to Hammer, oozing sex.
The following is the Russian translation:
Go figure.
Cheers...
Later, after returning from the Soviet Union, my brief career at a publishing house made me uncomfortably aware of just how many errors can creep into a book.
Translation errors are legion, of course, but not all of them have to be funny to be noticeable. And I recall the first time I noticed a problem with a "professionally written" translation.
In 1992, if memory serves as to the year, I was in Moscow attending a computer show and telling the world about the wonder that was OS/2. While walking the streets of the city after the show had closed for the day, I happened to see a paperback on sale at a newsstand, featuring a lurid drawing of an amply endowed woman with very hard eyes, one hand covering the nipple of one breast as the fingertips played with a diamond pendant that hung around her neck, and a half-exposed nipple peeking out from behind an open zipper.
The title of the book, Тварь, was a word unknown to me at the time. I didn't even look to see who had written it. However, having had my fill of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn and the rest of that serious gang, I was curious to see what kind of new fiction swamp the fall of the USSR had spawned.
When I did start to read the book, it took about a page and a half for me to flip back to the cover, look at the author's name, and experience an "Aha!" moment.
Мики Спиллейн.
Or, as the rest of us Americans know him, Mickey Spillane, the originator of fictional detective Mike Hammer and oftimes lite beer aficionado. I had bought a translation of two of the Hammer novels.
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out which book Тварь—which means a creature or a beast in Russian—was supposed to be. Eventually, I figured out it was The Twisted Thing, which is not one of my favorite Hammer outings. The second novel in the volume was a Hammer novel titled Большая охота, which I figured was Spillane's The Big Kill. Neither title translation was very good, in my opinion, but titles tend to be like that.
Not being a native Russian, I cannot tell you how corny (or, perhaps, not) the translations sounded in places (especially when Hammer would "pull out his cannon" and point it at bad guys). But there was one place where the translation just didn't feel right.
It comes just at the very beginning of The Big Kill (which I read first), which finds Hammer in a bar on "one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world" and "the rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat."
A woman described as a "tomato" in English, rendered "мулатка" in Russian ("mulatto," back-translated, though no Internet reference I found suggested any racial subtext relating "tomato" to anything other than "woman") comes up to Hammer, oozing sex.
The following is the Russian translation:
- Угостите меня? - Она примостилась рядом, стараясь теснее прижаться ко мне бедром.The part where the "tomato" seemingly insists that she's a lady didn't sound right. If I knew my Spillane, the translation was 180° off. Later, I checked the original text, which reads:
- Нет.
Ответ ей явно не понравился, и она перестала прижиматься.
- Джентльмены обычно угощают дам? - удивилась она и скромно опустила глаза. Ей, наверно, казалось обольстительным, но так как одно веко у нее прикрылось больше, чем другое, она выглядела просто глупо.
- А я не джентльмен, детка.
- Но я-то дама, поэтому вы можете заказать мне стаканчик.
И, сдавшись, я заказал.
"Buy me a drink?" She nestled next to me, trying to press her thigh as close to me as possible.
"No."
She clearly didn't like the answer, and stopped pressing.
"Don't gentlemen usually buy ladies a drink? she said, and modestly lowered her eyes. She surely thought the way she did that made her look seductive, but as one lid came down farther than the other, she only looked stupid.
"But I'm not a gentleman."
"But I am a lady, so you can order me a small glass."
So, giving up, I ordered.
[my translation]
"Buy me a drink? She crowded in next to me, seeing how much of herself she could plaster against my legs.I don't know why episodes like this stick with me. Heck I remember this, but I don't remember that equation from mechanics.
"No." It caught her by surprise and she quit rubbing.
"Don't gentlemen usually buy ladies a drink?" she said. She tried to lower her eyelids seductively but one came down farther than the other and made her look stupid.
"I'm not a gentleman, kid."
"I ain't a lady either, so buy me a drink"
So I bought her a drink.
Go figure.
Cheers...
