Translating Style A Literary Approach to Translation A Translation Approach to Literature Second Edition Tim Parks St. Jerome Publishing Manchester, UK & Kinderhook (NY), USA Published by St. Jerome Publishing InTrans Publications 2 Maple Road West, Brooklands P. O. Box 467 Manchester, M23 9HH, United Kingdom Kinderhook, NY 12106, USA Telephone +44 (0)161 973 9856 Telephone (518) 758-1755 Fax +44 (0)161 905 3498 Fax (518) 758-6702 [email protected] http://www.stjerome.co.uk ISBN 978-1905763-04-7 (pbk) Tim Parks 2007; reprinted 2011 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the Publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE. In North America, registered users may contact the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC): 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers MA 01923, USA. Typeset by Delta Typesetters, Cairo, Egypt Email: [email protected] British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Parks, Tim. Translating style : a literary approach to translation, a translation approach to literature / Tim Parks. -- 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-905763-04-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English fiction--Translations into Italian--History and criticism. 2. English fiction--20th century--History and criticism. 3. English language--Translating into Italian. 4. Modern- ism (Literature)--Great Britain. 5. English fiction--Appreciation--Italy. 6. Modernism (Literature)--Italy. 7. English language--Great Britain--Style. 8. Italian language--Style. I. Title. PR137.I8P37 2007 458’.022--dc21 2007020322 Translating Style A Literary Approach to Translation, A Translation Approach to Literature Second Edition Tim Parks Arising from a dissatisfaction with blandly general or abstrusely theoretical approaches to translation, this book sets out to show, through detailed and lively analysis, what it really means to translate literary style. Combining linguistic and lit crit approaches, it proceeds through a series of interconnected chapters to analyse translations of the works of D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Henry Green and Barbara Pym. Each chapter thus becomes an illuminating critical essay on the author concerned, showing how divergences between original and translation tend to be of a different kind for each author depending on the nature of his or her inspiration. This new and thoroughly revised edition introduces a system of ‘back transla- tion’ that now makes Tim Parks’ highly-praised book reader friendly even for those with little or no Italian. An entirely new final chapter considers the pro- found effects that globalization and the search for an immediate international readership is having on both literary translation and literature itself. Tim Parks was born in Manchester and studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. He presently runs a post-graduate course in translation at IULM university, Milan. He has written thirteen novels, the most recent being Cleaver, and three best selling accounts of life in provincial Italy as well as two collections of literary essays, Hell and Back and The Fighter. He is also the translator of Antonio Tabucchi, Italo Calvino, Alberto Moravia and Roberto Calasso and has twice won the prestigious John Florio prize and the Italo Calvino award for literary translation from Italian. Praise for the first edition This illuminating book should be read closely by anyone interested in the art of translation. Tim Parks belongs to that rarest breed of translator – one who also writes. He is a brilliantly idiosyncratic novelist who brings to the difficult task of translation a keen understanding of the way other novelists work. Paul Bailey, The Daily Telegraph A book … for anyone with an interest in translation studies, whether they are studying, teaching or practising translation. But equally a book for literary critics, essential for anyone concerned with Modernist fiction, and of great value to those working in the field of stylistics. … the reader is rewarded with unexpected and often brilliant insights. This is certainly one of the most interesting books on translation to appear recently. Jean Boase-Beir, The Translator … a stunningly successful essay on the nuts and bolts of translation, the most useful, from a translator’s point of view, that I have ever come across. … All Parks’s examples are rewarding and stimulating, and (more surprisingly, perhaps) he has made the book so readable that I have read it anywhere and everywhere, in bed, on buses, in a hospital waiting room, even in the bath. It is that sort of book, approachable, exciting. Isabel Quigley Attractive and interesting. Umberto Eco Translating Style is the ideal book for anyone who loves great literature … and who is fascinated by the mysterious ways in which writers exploit all the arcane qualities of literary language to expand our experience and our sensibilities. Bravo! Peter Bondanella Contents Acknowledgements vi Author’s Note to the New Edition ix 1. Identifying an Original 1 2. Translating the ‘Unhousedness’ of Women in Love 15 3. Translating the Evocative Spirit in James Joyce 57 4. Translating the Smoke Words of Mrs Dalloway 108 5. Translating the Matter of Samuel Beckett’s Manner 143 6. Barbara Pym and the Untranslatable Commonplace 172 7. On the Borders of Comprehensibility: The Challenge of Henry Green 198 8. Translating Individualism: Literature and Globalization 234 Bibliography 249 Index 252 Acknowledgements The author and publisher are grateful for permission to reprint extracts as follows: From Samuel Beckett: Disjecta, Calder, 1983; Murphy, Picador, 1973; Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, Calder, 1987; Watt, Jupiter Books edition, Calder and Boyars, 1972. Used by permission of Calder Publications Ltd, London. Murphy (1968). Used by permission of Editions de Minuit, Paris. Translation by Samuel Beckett. Murphy, Sugarco Edizioni, Milan, 1967. Translation by Cesare Cristofolini. From T.S. Eliot: Excerpts from The Waste Land, in Collected Poems 1909-1962, copyright 1936, copyright 1964, 1963 by T.S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company, and by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd., London. From Henry Green: Back; Doting; Loving; Party Going. Used by permission of Harvill Press, London. Passioni, Einaudi, Turin, 1990. Translation by Stefania Bertola. Partenza in gruppo, Adelphi, 2006. Translation by Carlo Bay. From James Joyce: The Dead; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses. Used by permis- sion of the Estate of James Joyce. Copyright the Estate of James Joyce. Dedalus, Adelphi, Milan, 1976. Translation by Cesare Pavese. Gente di Dublino, Garzanti, Milan, 1976. Translation by Marco Papi and Emilio Tardini. Ulisse, Oscar Mondadori, Milan, 1978. Translation by Giulio de Angelis. From D.H. Lawrence: Women in Love. Copyright 1920, 1922 by D.H. Lawrence, renewed 1948, 1950 by Frieda Lawrence. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. and Laurence Pollinger Limited, London. Donne innamorate, Rizzoli, Milan, 1989. Translation by Adriana dell’Orto. Used by permission of Rizzoli Corriere della Sera. Tim Parks vii From Barbara Pym: A Few Green Leaves. Used by permission of Macmillan GeneraI Books, London. Qualche Foglia Verde, La Tartaruga Edizioni, Milan, 1989. From Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway. Copyright 1925 by Harcourt Brace & Company and renewed in 1953 by Leonard Woolf. Used by permission of Harcourt Brace & Com- pany and the Society of Authors as the literary representatives of the Estate of Virginia Woolf. La Signora Dalloway, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan, 1993. Used by permission of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore. Translation by Nadia Fusini. Author’s Note to the New Edition This is a completely revised edition of a book written ten years ago. As such it represents a radical attempt to extend the book’s readership, to move it out of a niche and put it in the way of any reader interested in style, language and literature. Why was this necessary? Translating Style was never an overly academic book. It was never jargon bound. I had wanted to show how the experience of translation can tell us a lot about literature, give us insights into the books we love that we will not pick up from regular criticism. And I wanted to sug- gest that an understanding of literary strategies is essential for the translator. The only way to do this, I thought, was by analysing extended examples of stylish writing, together with their corresponding translations. To draw in as many people as possible I chose authors and books that many readers would be familiar with: the great modernists in particular: Lawrence Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, plus two favourites of mine, Barbara Pym and Henry Green. The problem was that since I looked extensively at Italian translations of those books (Italian being my second language), readers with little or no Italian would feel left out. I resigned myself to the idea that, for better or worse, such a book could appeal only to a limited audience. Yet again and again, over the years, people with no Italian at all told me they had read Translating Style and found it fascinating. If only, they said, they could get a slightly better sense of the transformations that had taken place in the Italian translation! This edition attempts to meet the needs of these readers, to demystify the Italian translations and hence to make my comments on the original English texts more persuasive. How? Imperfectly no doubt, using back-translations and, occasionally, glosses. From the second chapter on, from the point that is where we begin to discuss the work of our six chosen authors, every passage of Italian translation is followed by a back-translation, which is to say by the same passage returned (back-translated) into English.