2010年10月28日 星期四

Translator sees U.S. influence in Murakami's humor and writing style

Translator sees U.S. influence in Murakami's humor and writing style

BY AKIRO WADA ASAHI WEEKLY

2010/10/27


photoJay Rubin

Jay Rubin, a former Harvard University professor of Japanese literature, has translated many of the novels of Haruki Murakami into English. He is now translating Murakami's latest book, "1Q84."

In an e-mail interview, Rubin, 68, discussed Murakami's literary style, his impressions of the writer and other issues surrounding the translation of Murakami's works. Excerpts follow:

Question: You're in the middle of translating "1Q84." How is it going?

Answer: I sent in Book 1 in January and am now on page 423 of Book 2 (as of Sept. 20). My deadline is Nov. 15, and I believe that is also (translator) Philip Gabriel's deadline for Book 3.

Q: When did you first read Murakami, and what was your first impression?

A: I first read him in 1989 when an American publisher asked me to evaluate "Sekai no Owari to Hado-boirudo Wandarando" (Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World). I loved the book and started reading Murakami from that point almost exclusively for the next 10 years or more.

Q: What originally attracted you to Murakami as his translator?

A: I especially liked his short stories, so I looked up his contact information in Bungei Nenkan, an almanac of writers, and wrote him a letter introducing myself as a translator of Natsume Soseki and asking permission to translate "Pan-ya Sai-shugeki" (The Second Bakery Attack), "Zo no Shometsu" (The Elephant Vanishes) and a few other pieces.

Not many months later, I had my first translation published in Playboy magazine, which was a big change after academic journals such as Monumenta Nipponica and the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies.

Q: What is Murakami like in person?

A: Quiet, funny, modest, a lot like the "Boku," or "me," narrator in the early works.

Q: Which of Murakami's works do you think is his masterpiece? And why?

A: "Sekai no Owari to Hado-boirudo Wandarando." It is the most architectonically perfect of his longer works, and it makes the reader experience firsthand the functions of the human brain that so fascinate Murakami (and me).

Q: John Irving and Raymond Carver are Murakami's favorite American writers. Do you feel the influence of them in Murakami's works?

A: Yes, in the humor and the simple style.

Q: When you have questions on your translation, how do you approach him? Could you give us a recent example of questions?

A: I e-mail him or his editor at Shinchosha Publishing Co. He is a good e-mail correspondent. Many passages of "1Q84" could be translated into either first or third person, and I have asked him which he prefers in certain cases. He usually advises me to do whatever works best in English.

Q: What are the major difficulties in translating Murakami novels compared with novels by Soseki and other writers you have worked on?

A: Because Murakami's style is so strongly influenced by his deep knowledge of English, it is naturally easier to translate "back" into English than other writers I have worked on. Soseki also has an English-influenced style, but he also allows his vast knowledge of the Chinese classics to show through.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke often attempts to mimic classic or medieval Japanese. I almost decided against translating his "Ogata Ryosai Oboegaki" because so much of its interest in Japanese is the use of a medieval documentary style known as sorobun, for which there is no English equivalent. Finally, though, I felt so strongly that the story should be translated that I decided to sacrifice that aspect of the style and opt for a formal style such as might be used in an official document.

In Murakami's case, there are no such problems. He often uses newspaper style when supposedly quoting directly from newspaper reports, but that is about as extreme as it gets. Because Murakami's style is generally simple, the challenge is to write simple sentences in English that still have rhythm and don't sound flat or boring.

Q: Murakami sometimes directly incorporates English phrases into his novel. Does that fit well in your translation? For example, in "Nejimaki-dori Kuronikuru" (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle), he used the phrase, "Kojinteki ni toranaide kure," which is obviously from "Don't take it personally."

A: The problem is to translate it "back" into English that is as unusual as the Japanese, but often I lazily go for the "original" English expression. This way, the batakusasa (Western air) of Murakami's style is lost. Sorry.

Q: Tell me something about your translation process. Do you read the book all the way through first before starting on the translation?

A: Yes, I always read the work first in case there are special key phrases that need to be handled in a certain way from the beginning. I get up early in the morning and work until my brain turns into tofu, which is usually around 11:30 a.m. My brain is not of much use for the rest of the day.

Q: Do you think Murakami's works have contributed to the growing interest in Japanese literature in the United States?

A: Of course. He started this almost single-handedly.

Q: You translated the original text of the "Wall and Egg" speech at the 24th International Book Fair last year in Israel where Murakami received the Jerusalem Prize literary award. Did he make any comments about your text?

A: Not that I remember. He thanked me for it, of course, but I don't think he had any problems with my translation.

Q: Murakami's works have been viewed as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature for many years. What do you think are the chances of this someday?

A: I can't imagine any other Japanese writer getting it before Murakami. It's just a matter of time.

2010年10月27日 星期三

Advertising slogan: Ford. Feel the difference.


It has been so successful at generating cash that it expects net debt in the automotive division to reach zero by December, a shift of nearly $9bn in one year and well ahead of schedule. Though not yet investment grade, its debt nearly trades as such and its shares are up 90 per cent over one year, greatly enhancing financial flexibility. The fact that its balance sheet was not cleansed in bankruptcy like General Motors and Chrysler was seen by some just a year ago as a competitive weakness. That gap is closing rapidly, insulating it in the event of another recession. Though it resonated less with customers, Ford is best-described by its previous slogan: “Built for the road ahead.” 福特在產生現金流方面大獲成功。該公司預計,到今年12月,其汽車部門的淨債務將歸零——一年內減少近90億美元,較計劃大大提前。儘管還未達到投資級別,但福特的債務幾乎就是按照投資級別進行交易的,而且股價在一年內上漲了90%,極大地提高了財務靈活性。就在一年前,有人認為,福特的資產負債表沒有像通用(General Motors)和克萊斯勒(Chrysler)那樣在破產中經過一番清理,這是一項競爭劣勢。但差距正在迅速縮小,這樣如果再發生衰退,福特也能免受影響。儘管福特還沒有引起太多客戶的共鳴,但對福特最好的寫照就是該公司以前的口號:“ 開拓未來之路"不太對的翻譯

Ford Vehicles
Advertising slogans: Ford. Feel the difference.
Ford. Bold moves.
(USA)
Built for life in Canada.
(Canada)
Built for the road ahead.
Ford. Designed for living. Engineered to last.
Have you driven a Ford lately?

2010年10月26日 星期二

翻譯:隨便與力不從心

譯者是哲學系畢業的 不過碰到 idealism 還是翻譯錯誤
(p.117)

idealism
[名][U]
1 理想主義;理想化されたもの, 理想の姿.
2 《芸術》理想主義.
3 《哲学》観念論;唯心論(⇒MATERIALISM);理想主義.

同樣的 義大利哲學家 克羅齊 Croce 也翻譯錯誤 (p.5)

內容錯誤也多多......
譬如說 cloud of theories and interpretations....
是很多的理論和詮釋 不是 理論雲冉冉昇起
(p.7)

Cubism /A Cubism Reader



----

劉紹銘 張愛玲的中英互譯--附/輪迴轉生:試論作者自譯之得失

中國現代小說的史與學: 向夏志清先生致敬



案: 此君很妙 連自己的英文文章名都認為翻譯起來力不從心

Reuben A. Browe

居浩然《十論》

居浩然 (1959)patterns 翻譯成系統可參考 (patters of expression 表現象徵系統,《十論》,台北:文星書店再版1987,頁42)

論翻譯 pp33-44

都指Reuben A. Browe主編的一本 On Translation
----
他生前還出一本
Mirror on mirror : translation, imitation, parody / Reuben Brower
Bib ID 317489
Format BookBook
Author
Brower, Reuben Arthur, 1908-
Description Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1974.
vii, 183 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
ISBN 0674576454
Series

Harvard studies in comparative literature ; 33

Full contents
  • Introd.: Translation as parody.
  • Verbal and visual translation of myth: Neptune in Virgil, Rubens, Dryden.
  • The Theban eagle in English plumage.
  • Pope's Iliad for twentieth-century readers.
  • From the Iliad to the novel via The rape of the lock.
  • A poet's Odyssey.
  • Dryden's epic manner and Virgil.
  • The heresy of plot.
  • Poetic and dramatic design in versions and translations of Shakespeare.
  • Seven Agamemnons.
Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.




---
1975/3/28

Reuben A. Brower, Cabot Professor of English Literature, died yesterday afternoon after a heart attack. He was 67.

Brower, a former master of Adams House, became a tutor at Harvard in 1932 and a full professor here in 1953. He spent the 14 years before he got tenure at Harvard teaching at Amherst College.

Brower's family will hold a memorial service for him at 3 p.m. on April 1, at their house at I Hay Road in Belmont. The University will hold a separate memorial service at a time to be announced later.

An expert on English writers, Brower last semester taught English 12a, "Shakespeare: A Survey of the Plays."

He was born in Lanesboro, Pa., in 1908, and graduated summa cum laude from Amherst in 1930. Amherst gave him an honorary doctorate in 1964.

Brower also taught classics at Harvard and Amherst.

He is survived by his wife and three children.

2010年10月25日 星期一

straight sex

The Naked Eye (2001)/ The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body

195裸眼:一個動物學家的人類探索之旅毛里斯戴茲蒙(Morris Desmond)/楊軍/馬可孛羅文化出版2004719.85 2064圖書
The Naked Eye (2001)
這本書用的語彙多為中國的 出版社懶得管它
漏字掉行處不少
連男女之愛 straight sex 都不知道是"異性交"

2010年10月24日 星期日

翻譯錯誤故意不改

這本中文版有些獨家訪談
譬如說某名藝評家的法文引文翻譯錯誤
卻故意不改
因為改了之後整本書就沒說服力

A Lifelong Interest :Conversations on Art and Science with Didier Eribon

2010年10月22日 星期五

LEAF (中國名:聆風)

日產汽車將於2010年12月推出電動汽車(EV)“LEAF(中國名:聆風)”。該公司在7月面向媒體召開的先進技術說明會上,介紹了EV之外的環境技術和安全技術……

2010年10月17日 星期日

cite 懶得查辭典和用常識思考 容易鬧笑話

懶得查辭典和用常識思考 容易鬧笑話

cite and fine, saggy

Marcelle said she’d like to pass a law allowing police to cite and fine people for wearing saggy pants that expose their underwear, but recognizes that constitutional issues prevent such a law.

馬榭爾說,她希望通過一項法律,允許警察能引用 (sic)及對穿垮褲並露出內褲的人開罰單,但也承認這種法律違憲無法過關。

2010年10月12日 星期二

mythos

On Literature by Umberto Eco艾可談文學

mythos 翻譯成情節 p.288
很奇怪這同義於"敘述" 或廣義的神話
參考....

2010年10月7日 星期四

狄德罗文集The Aeneid 卷一 第462行

如果我記得沒錯
這本狄德罗文集 以前有廣播公司版本
可是狄德罗認為
The Aeneid (əˈniːɪd; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced ... Aeneidos) is a Latin epic poem written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC (29 ...
最美的一句 卷一 第462行
兩處翻譯 天差地別啦

狄德罗文集

作者: 狄德罗
副标题: 他常常超越了他的时代
ISBN: 9787800889530
页数: 588
定价: 29.8
出版社: 中国社会出版社
装帧: 平装
出版年: 1997年7月第一版



简介 · · · · · ·

  目录:
  狄德罗的生平与著作(代序)
  哲学思想录
  哲学思想录增补
  供明眼人参考的谈盲人的信
  对自然的解释 关于物质和运动的原理
  关于美的根源及其本质的哲学探讨
  关于《私生子》的谈话
  演员奇谈
  论 天才
  关于“天才”
  达朗贝和狄德罗的谈话
  达朗贝的梦
  谈话的继续
  拉摩的侄儿
  布甘维尔《旅行计》补篇
  《百科全书》选辑
  狄德罗年表



2010年10月3日 星期日

The Mirror and the Lamp

The Mirror and the Lamp

現在可以簡單地談此書的翻譯

人名的翻譯不去找標準譯名 如 Titian /Mill 等

由於多人翻譯 將 norm 有時翻譯成規範 有時為模式 (這詞比較長常翻譯 pattern)


poem, poetry, poet 只翻譯成詩歌與詩人

有時候必須考慮常識
譬如說 a bristling of the skin, a precipitation of water. and a sensation like.....p.138



a precipitation of water 譯成 水對著眼睛澆來 p.164

這水其實是類淚水 通長常說法市是 "奪眶而出"
[U][C]生体の分泌[排出]液, 体液(涙・汗・尿・よだれ・羊水など)

felicity 不可翻譯成 理智 felicity, felicitous

即使在詩中 Absent thee from felicity awhile (p.163)



the Turnuses and Didos in it . (p.70)

p.83 亂譯成 "生造的詞語抑或文字游戲"


Turnus, in Virgil's Aeneid, Italian hero, son of Daunus and the nymph Venilia, brother of the nymph Juturna. He was the king of the Rutulians and suitor of Lavinia, daughter of king Latinus. The Latins joined with the Rutulians to fight the Trojans; Turnus killed Pallas, son of Evander, was twice saved by Juno, but was finally killed by Aeneas (see AENEID, books 7–12).

2010年10月1日 星期五

ignore , radical

Messrs Tapscott and Williams sometimes get carried away with their enthusiasm for the web. Great innovators often need the courage to ignore the crowd. (Henry Ford was fond of saying that if he had listened to his customers he would have produced a better horse and buggy.) Great organisations need time to cook up world-changing ideas. Hierarchies can be just as valuable to the process of creative destruction as networks. But the authors are nevertheless right to argue that the web is the most radical force of our time. And they are surely also right to predict that it has only just begun to work its magic.


macrowikinomics



天下半月刊的摘要

"兩位作者對網路太過熱衷,有時會顯得有些過頭。偉大的革新者通常需要勇氣才能忽略群眾,偉大的組織需要時間才能想出改變世界的點子。但他們也說得沒錯,網路是我們這個時代最基進的力量,而且網路現在才剛要開始施展它的魔力。"


未翻譯
ignore 或許用"不理睬/不理會"
radical 用"基進"是一般人不太懂的英文字根翻譯法 可考慮用" 根本的/徹底的"

Buttonwood 標題難譯 重新擬題 還是意譯

標題難譯 重新擬題 還是意譯

Low interest rates have been a mixed blessing for equities
Buttonwood Busily going nowhere

IF YOU are the sort of person who does not pay much attention to the daily gyrations of the stockmarket, congratulations. After nearly nine months of volatility, and a deciduous forest's worth of reports by stockbrokers on the outlook for markets, global share prices are back where they were at the start of the year.

All this frenetic activity has doubtless generated lots of income for middlemen in the financial sector. But the clients of stockbrokers have, in aggregate, merely taken home their dividends. And given that the American market is yielding just 2.5%, a lot of that will have been absorbed by fees and commissions.

The lacklustre performance of equity markets in 2010 is symptomatic of the previous decade. A long-term asset-return study by Deutsche Bank found that American equities had delivered slightly negative returns over the ten years up to the end of July.
Related items

Currencies: Trial of strengthSep 23rd 2010

The factor pulling stockmarkets in different directions this year has been low interest rates. On the one hand, low rates entice investors out of cash and into riskier assets. For example, issuance of American high-yield (or junk) bonds has already reached $168 billion this year, more than was raised in the whole of 2009. Jim Sullivan of Prudential, an American insurance group, says that many institutional investors are drifting up the yield curve, buying investment-grade bonds as an alternative to low-yielding Treasury bonds. Equities have benefited from the same process.

On the other hand, the implication of low interest rates is that the outlook for economic growth, and thus corporate profits, is extremely subdued. The market has suffered a couple of "growth scares” this year, first when the European sovereign-debt crisis was raging in the spring and second, in August, when there was talk of a double-dip recession.

The markets have snapped out of their funk this month. There have been some moderately better data from America on non-farm payrolls and manufacturing activity. The National Bureau of Economic Research said this week that the American recession ended in the summer of 2009.

But the data have been far from universally upbeat. The real boost to confidence may have come from the conviction that the central banks will act again to revive activity. These hopes will have been encouraged by the Federal Reserve's latest statement on September 21st which talked, unusually for a central bank, of inflation levels "below those the committee judges most consistent over the longer run with its mandate to promote maximum employment and price stability.” In short, inflation is too low.

With rates already near zero the Fed's remaining policy option is to pursue quantitative easing (QE) in the form of money creation to buy government and corporate bonds. But will that do much to help the American economy? Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics points out that when the Fed stopped its first round of QE Treasury-bond yields were around the same as when it started. Indeed, yields have fallen since the Fed stopped the programme. And Capital Economics' measure of broad-money supply (M3) fell while QE was in operation.

David Bowers of Absolute Strategy Research nonetheless argues that low rates in the developed world will eventually boost global growth as they are imported by the developing world via managed exchange rates. Asia will come to the rescue of America and Europe. Perhaps. But there are complicating factors, including the potential for international disputes as Asian countries try to manage their exchange rates (see article).

There is also the danger of complacency. Japanese stagnation couldn't happen here, Western commentators used to argue, because the Japanese were too slow to act, propped up their problem banks, tightened fiscal policy too early and all the rest. Yet history is repeating itself.

Core inflation in America is less than 1%. Two years after the Fed slashed rates almost to zero, ten-year Treasury-bond yields are 2-3%, around the same level as Japanese bonds reached two years after Japan's short-term rates fell to 0.5%. European governments are tightening fiscal policy well before their economies have recovered output lost in the recession.

The more the economic outlook turns Japanese, the harder it will be for equity markets. American equities may have had a decade of poor returns since the dotcom crash in 2000. Yet Japanese investors have had to endure two decades of frustration (and counting) since the end of Tokyo's bull market.



前車之鑑!日經濟蕭條全球上演?

作者:經濟學人  出處:Web Only 2010/09

相關關鍵字:經濟學人

全球股價歷經數月起伏,又回到今年初的水準,這為金融中介商帶來了許多收入,但一般客戶卻沒有拿到多少錢。今年股市表現平淡是過去十年的症候,銀行發現,從7月底往回推十年,美國股市呈現些微的負報酬。

今年將市場拉上拉下的因素是利率。低利率促使投資人將資金放入風險較高的資產;也代表經濟前景不佳。市場經歷了幾次衝擊,先是歐債危機,接著是再次陷入衰退的恐懼;這個月市場重新振作,美國部分經濟數據有所改善,美國國家經濟研究所也表示,美國衰退已於去年夏天結束。

但數據並非全都有所改善,真正拉抬信心的,可能是各界相信各國央行會再次行動。聯準會於9月21日的聲明,簡單來說就是認為通膨太低。利率接近零,聯準會只剩量化寬鬆可用,但量化寬鬆卻不一定真的有用。

西方論者原本認為,日本式的不景氣不可能發生在西方,因為日本反應太慢、支持自己的銀行,又太早緊縮財政政策。但歷史正在重演。美國核心通膨不到 1%;聯準會將利率砍至接近0,過了二年,十年美國公債的殖利率為2-3%,日本短期利率掉至0.5%過後兩年,公債的水準也差不多如此。歐洲政府也在經 濟尚未自衰退完全復元之前,就開始緊縮財政政策。

經濟前景變得越像日本,股市就越難熬。美國股市自2000年網路泡沫後,這十年報酬都不佳;但日本自從牛市結束之後,投資人已經忍耐了二十年的挫折,而且時間還在繼續拉長。



Buttonwood, sycamore