Translation

Maybe it’s because I’m bilingual, but I find that reading translated works is almost always less satisfying to me than reading things in their original language. I read Crime and Punishment during my last semester, and while I ended up loving it – which isn’t to say it didn’t drive me crazy – I also didn’t like it nearly as much as any of the other classics that I read that semester that had all be written originally in English.

Now I’ve started reading The Red and the Black, and I’m enjoying it immensely. The beginning was slow, though, and it took me some time to get into the flow of the writing style; once I did, I managed to begin to find the characters and the social dynamics to be fascinating.

And yet – there’s something missing there. I think, though I can’t be sure, that it’s the fact that I’m reading a translation from the French. I feel that there’s something inevitably lost in the translation process, and it’s something that is impossible to regain unless I learn to read French perfectly and read it in the original. Even then, I’ll have had to have lived in France long enough to understand the ins and outs of the idioms, the connotations of certain phrases and the way I’m supposed to feel about Napoleonic history.

I’m so glad that I’m bilingual and am able to enjoy reading books in two languages – English and Hebrew – and feel the incredible and fascinating difference between writing styles in each of them. However, I wonder whether I’d notice that hard-to-describe lack in the translated works I’m going to be reading this semester if I was monolingual.

Thoughts? Comments? Have any of you felt this or do you think I’m crazy?

In the Shadow of Days

Judy tried to frown. Standing in front of her mirror, she tried to maker her lips curve down naturally. It didn’t work – her whole mouth would sort of shift into a strange diagonal line and the lips would almost disappear. She pulled the corners of her lips down with the forefinger of each hand and looked at the result. It was ridiculous. Walking back to her typewriter, she pressed the newfangled “delete” button that automatically whited out the previous words she’d written, which had been “I frowned.” She had just realized that there wasn’t really such a thing as frowning, or that at least she herself didn’t know how to do it.

Over the little white squares that hid the falsity, she tapped out a more accurate description, slowly speaking the words aloud and pulling them through her mouth like a piece of gum. “I furr-r-r-rowed my bro-o-ow.” With a loud CLICK, the page juttered up and sideways, the typewriter moving it mechanically so that she could type out the next line.

It was the seventy-second day of her experiment, and a big stack of papers already stood beside the machine. She had another eighteen before she needed to start sending the manuscript out. After that, she’d have another sixty – and not a day more than that – before she had to return to her day-job. Her heart sometimes pounded with adrenaline as she pounded the keys with her two forefingers, the same ones that pulled down her lips in order to check the authenticity of a frown. They were her trusty sidekicks and she often had nightmares about them getting slammed in doors or drawers, or being chopped off by knives. She’d wake up with them stuffed into her mouth, awkwardly, with drool sticking her cheek to the cheap pillow-case.

The light was fading but Judy didn’t turn the light on yet. She tried to save electricity so that her bills wouldn’t give her a heart attack. She kept typing as the sounds of the evening news rose and fell in the apartments around her.

Sir

Correction, my lord. I was not seen with your first daughter in the garden behind the East Wing of your country house. It was your second daughter. The one who reported my actions, the gossipy housekeeper – and, forgive my aside, my lord, but it is not wise to keep gossiping dependents, for they are a hazard that should not be risked – well, in any case, and not to put too fine a point on it, she lied as to the actions she witnessed.

I see you wish to speak. Let me stop you before you begin, my lord, and forgive my impudence. It is not my intention to create any more bad blood between us than there already is. I shall be quick. Your daughter, sir… She is a beauty, there is no doubt. And she is nobility and charm itself. Do not fret – she shall find a husband yet, whether or not she is chaste.

Ah, my lord, don’t shout so. I prithee, calm yourself, man, or you will suffer a fit. I was not implying that your daughter is not as pure as the freshly fallen snow. She is angelic. I simply meant that whatever your housekeeper saw or did not see might spread to others.

Do not worry, I am leaving momentarily. I will simply say this. My lord, I respect your daughter, probably more than her. When I was conversing with her in the garden, I was simply asking her advice. She gave me advice. I am indebted to her. Not to you, my lord, but to you.

CENSORED