The noble art of (mis)translation
I am reading Oliver Twist to our children, once chapter a night. They really like it, recognize it as the real ginger, strong stuff. Naomi told me she particular likes the long descriptions of people and places -- as if you were watching a movie, as she says. And they also like Cruikshanks' illustrations -- we had a lot of fun spotting the bible story on the painting in Ms. Bedwin's parlour. It's the Good Samaritan, of course
Of course, that's the difference between a book written now, and a book written in Dickens' time. Dickens provided his readers what I imagine Holywood provides nowadays, forcing present-day writers to explore the only nook unreachable with a camera: tight-third psychological insight.
Anyway, I wanted to say, Dickens is old-fashioned. So old-fashioned that the most recent translation into Dutch dates from the fifties; I have one other translation lying about, but that one used to belong to my maternal grandfather and must be about a century old. The translation at hand is by a certain C.J. Kelk, who was born in 1901, and his translation of Oliver Twist was first published in 1952, My copy was published by Prisma, I bought it second-hand for E2, and it already has lost its front cover. And it's so badly printed that it's actively evil.
Reading his translation is an educational exercise, very educational. We have to look up Dutch words not even Irina knows -- and sometimes Naomi has a word right we both miss. The children are allowed to ask for footnotes. Funny, then, that when reading the English I seldom encounter a word so old-fashioned that I cannot understand the sentence... Dutch must have changed more in fifty years than English in a hundred.
But sometimes there are paragraphs that hardly seem to make sense in the Dutch translation; and then it's a fair bet that Kelk had reached the limits of his understanding of English. As in chapter 15, in a tirade by Grimwig. First the English, then the Dutch, and then I will point out some bloomers, for the monoglot:
"He may have worse, I say," repeated Mr. Grimwig, "Where does come from? Who is he? What is he? He has had a fever. What of that? Fevers are not peculiar to good people, are they? Bad people have fevers sometimes; haven't they, eh? I knew a man who was hung in Jamaica for murdering his master. He had had a fever six times; he wasn't recommended to mercy on that account. Pooh! nonsense!"
'Hij is misschien nog veel afschuwelijker,' herhaalde mijnheer Grimwig. 'Waar komt ie vandaan? Wie is hij? Wat is het er voor een? Hij heeft de koorts gehad, hoe staat het daar mee? Koorts is niet iets voor welopgevoede mensen, wel? Alleen verkeerde lui hebben wel eens de koorts, is het niet? Ik heb een kerel gekend, die in Jamaica werd opgehangen omdat hij zijn baas had vermoord. Zes keer heeft hij de koorts gehad; daarom kwam hij juist niet voor gratie in aanmerking. Pff! Nonsens!
The most important difference, is that in the Dutch, fever is something that is associated with lower-class, uncivilized people, the wrong kind of people. The murderer wasn't recommended for mercy explicitly because he had had the fever six times. In the English, Mr. Grimwig automatically assumes that Mr. Brownlow is moved to mercy by the fever, because he apparently thinks that only good people can have a fever. There's a big difference between 'Fevers are not peculiar to good people' and 'Only the wrong sort of people have fevers'...
Oh, and 'What of that?', should be translated as 'Nou, en?'.
The older, anonymous, translation, my grandfather's copy, doesn't translate everything, and is in fact too old to read to the children, but what it translates, it translates accurately:
"Misschien is hij nog wel erger, zeg ik," herhaalde Mijnheer Grimwig. "Waar komt hij vandaan? Wie is hij? Wat is hij? Hij heeft de koorts gehad. Wat geeft dat? Koorts is geen voorrecht voor goede menschen, nietwaar? Slechte menschen hebben ook soms de koorts. Poeh, onzin!"/books/mainstream | permanent link | |