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Herta Muller Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature!

October 8, 2009 in award, translation by Kim | 1 comment

20994-004-D4CF17B4It’s a big week for literary awards.  On Tuesday, Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize and today (or yesterday depending upon your time zone), Herta Muller won the Nobel Prize for Literature.   The committee described Muller as a writer who “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.” Muller grew up during the Nicolae Ceausescu regime and writes from the perspective of living under a totalitarian government.  Many noted that she is an appropriate choice for the 20th Anniversary of the fall of communism.  I haven’t heard of her before, but what I learned today peaks my interest.  Rather than summarizing what is better said by others, here are some interesting links to Mueller information and this year’s Nobel Prize:

  • Three Percent, my favorite blog about translated literature, lists reviews for each of Muller’s works that are translated into English.  Let me know which one you’re interested in reading, I’m not sure which I want to start with and am in the mood to be easily influenced.
  • Michael Orthofer of the The Complete Review/Literary Saloon predicted yesterday that Herta Muller would win and today posted a Herta Muller page full of information about her and her books.
  • Book Fox, one of my top two Los Angeles literary blogs, wrote about the speculation that precedes the announcement of the awards, and then about the lessons learned from this year to remember for predicting a future winner of the literature prize. 

Awards are fun and frequently I am introduced to new authors and books, which has certainly been my experience with the Nobel Prize.  I’m looking forward to discovering Muller’s world.

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Translated Tuesday – The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder

September 1, 2009 in book review, translation, Uncategorized by Kim | 1 comment

ogawa-752354Claire and I started the Translated Tuesday summer series after receiving so many lovely translated works in response to my post about The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  It is appropriate that we end the summer series with The Housekeeper and the Professor because I learned of the book through Hedgehog.  While visiting Portrait of Bookstore, I raved about the book to a fellow customer and the owner, Julie von Zerneck, overheard me and recommended I read The Housekeeper and the Professor.  In true bookseller fashion, she was right, if you like one, you’ll like the other.

The narrator is a housekeeper assigned to work for a math professor with an eighty minute memory.  Due to a head injury, he can remember everything before the accident, but after the accident only the last eighty minutes.  The housekeeper must reintroduce herself every morning.  When confronted with an unfamiliar situation, the professor falls back on talking about numbers.  Each morning when the housekeeper arrives, he asks her phone number or her birth date.  He discovers that her birth date is February 20th or 220.  The number on the back of the watch he won as a prize for solving a math problem is 284.  He notices the relationship between the two numbers:

“[T]hink about these two numbers:  220 and 284.  Do they mean anything to you?”

Pulling me by my apron strings, he sat me down at the table and produced a pencil stub from his pocket.  On the back of an advertising insert, he wrote the two numbers . . . “Well, what do you make of them?”

I wiped my hands on my apron, feeling awkward, as the Professor looked at me expectantly.  I wanted to respond, but had no idea what sort of answer would please a mathematician.  To me, they were just numbers.

“Well I stammered. “I suppose you could say they’re both three-digit numbers.  And that they’re fairly similar in size–for example, if I were in the meat section at the supermarket, there’d be very little difference between a package of sausage that weighed 220 grams and one that weighed 284 grams.  They’re so close that I would just buy the one that was fresher.  They seem pretty much the same–they’re bothin the two hundreds, and they’re both even–”

“Good!” he almost shouted, shaking the leather strap of his watch. . . “It’s important to use your intuition.  You swoop down on numbers, like a kingfisher catching the glint of sunlight on the fish’s fin.”

The Professor’s enthusiasm for math and joy in sharing it is a building block in the relationship.  The housekeeper’s willingness and curiosity about math fuels their discussions.   And the relationship between 220 and 284?  They Read the rest of this entry »

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Translated Tuesday – The Concubine of Shanghai by Hong Ying, translated by Liu Hong

August 25, 2009 in book review, translation, Uncategorized by Kim | No comments

 

My favorite part of the book--that's the author on the front cover

My favorite part of the book--that's the author on the front cover

  The Concubine of Shanghai by Hong Ying tells an age old “beach read” story–truly deprived girl makes good but the cost is high.  It even has a fairly common Asian twist, the girl is sold to a brothel owner and starts as a prostitute.  Cassia works as a servant in the Duchess Pavilion, the best whorehouse in Shanghai, and the leader of the Hong Brotherhood (presumably the powerful Triad, it’s never fully explained) falls for her unbound feet and breasts and her feisty attitude.  Their torrid romance is cut short when he is brutally murdered.  With Cassia’s support gone, she eventually re-makes herself as the leader of an acting troupe.  The new Triad leader notices her and as his mistress she rises once again to prosperity.  To the extent we all like stories that sweep us away, Hong Ying provides moments of that, but it feels like Judith Krantz Chinese style.

While the book quotes the New York Times describing Hong Ying as “a raw and powerful writer,” I think the reviewer was reading another book or the translation was bad.  As Claire discussed in last week’s Translated Tuesday post, sometimes reading translated books can feel alienating and it’s hard to know if it’s the intent of the writer, or if the writing just isn’t as good as it could be, or if it’s the translation.  Here, I suspect there is enough blame to go around.  Awkward phrasing is clearly the responsibility of the translator, especially when the word “the” is missing or when there is a direct translation of the words but the meaning is lost.  At one point in the book, the author pokes fun at a speech by the American ambassador saying “his pronunciation was good, but the words he used were too formal, causing Read the rest of this entry »

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Alienation

August 18, 2009 in book review, translation by Claire | 5 comments

What is it about books in translation?

Kim and I had a long discussion about books in translation recently.  I  said that I find something distancing about books that have been translated–that the very nature of their not being read in their native language makes them feel a little less emotionally present for me.  

For instance, as much as I enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the characters never felt entirely real to me.   (Read this for Kim’s take on that book and its sequel.)  I was fascinated by their story but I didn’t live it along with them.  Maybe it’s a stretch to blame that on the fact I wasn’t reading it in the original Swedish, but I genuinely did find some of the writing jarring.  Sometimes the tone of the book was very slangy and relaxed; other times, it felt oddly formal.  Of course, for all I know, that was exactly what the author intended.  But to me it felt like a translation issue.

Kim argued that it’s the type of book I’ve read most recently in translation that’s made me feel distanced from the protagonists, which is a valid argument.  I tried to think of a book or books I’ve read in translation that’s completely swept me up, and the only thing I’ve come up with so far are Colette’s Claudine novels.  Claudine’s voice always felt real and close and fresh to me.  I believed in her and cared passionately about her.  I can’t say I felt quite as drawn in by any of Colette’s other books, but that does mean that my theory of translations being inherently alienating doesn’t hold true 100 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

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Translated Tuesday for Kids – Tell Me a Story

August 11, 2009 in book review, childrens, translation by Kim | 2 comments

WomenofWonderSince June, Claire and I reviewed several books in our Translated Tuesday summer series, but all have been for adults.  In this age of instant technology and globalization, encountering other cultures through literature isn’t only for adults, kids need to know their world is larger than their neighborhood.  Our answer, the Tell Me a Story CD series.  These three CDs, Tell Me a Story, Tell Me a Story – Animal Magic, and Tell Me a Story – Women of Wonder aren’t direct translations of foreign tales, but a re-telling of folktales formatted for children that opens up the world for them. 

A perfect way to introduce children to different cultures is through stories.  It’s fun to learn what is different, but even more so what is the same.  These are charming stories that promote universal values:  honor, courage, love, care, friendship, respect, community.  Each is introduced with music native to the location of the story and frequently narrated in an appropriate accent.  These CDs feel like a magic carpet ride around the world.

Car trips, whether long or short, can be a challenge with children.  Before my kids could read, we traveled near and far with story CDs constantly playing.  Read the rest of this entry »

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