Notes From The Geek Show

Lost in Translation -- Luis Gallego

2008-07-04T17:46:00.001+01:00

Another interview with one of me translators, and again I'll let the poor fellow introduce himself. So:

OK, let's start with the basic pimpage -- your name, the language you're translating the book into, which book and for which publisher:

This is easy! My name is Luis Gallego, I’m translating Ink by Hal Duncan in Spanish. I’m working for La Factoría de Ideas:

http://www.lafactoriadeideas.es/

Can you give us a little sense of where you live and what it's like. How would you describe it to a would-be visitor from foreign shores?

Well, at the present time I’m living in Essaouira, Morocco. Although the publisher address is in Madrid, I work via the Internet, so I’ve decided to live here to see if I can cram my head with some Arabic and French nonsenses... and for windsurfing too!

The Medina of Essaouira is very nice, UNESCO World Heritage and home of movies such “Kingdom of Heaven”, but Moroccan people can be very annoying with foreigns in that place. I’m trying to find the spirit of Jimmy Hendrix instead of going there, but I still can’t find it, maybe in Festival Gnaua: Musiques du Monde in June. Sex, drugs and darbukas (goblet drums)!

Essaouira is also a Mecca of wind sports due to trade winds that blow nearly the entire year.

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essaouira

What kind of stuff do you get up to when you're not working? Do you write yourself? Any other involvement in the wider scene? Or other scenes, for that matter? Basically, what do you do for kicks?

I’ll talk about my constructive habits (my vices another day). No, I don’t write myself. The few things I wrote was some kind of midnight revulsive to wash over my soul, but I haven’t got imagination, haven’t got the Sight to conceive such fantasy like Vellum. Maybe in the future...

I play a lot of sport to compensate for all the hours a day I’m seated. I practise climbing, bike, Quan Ki Do (Vietnamese kung fu directly to your heart chakra) and now I want to make friends with wind and sea in a lustful trio of sorts.
So, how long have you been translating and how did you get into this line of work?

Let me begin with the ending. I was in my last year of Veterinary and I didn’t make it. I failed one subject -again-, the last one, and I was going to spend the following months studying only one annoying subject. I needed to do something useful with my life -and make money too-, so I started to look for a job in various employment pages on the Internet. One of the requests was from one publisher who was “looking for people with translation qualifications for a job translating English books –sci-fi, fantasy, historical, suchlike- into Spanish”. I thought myself that work would be great for me while I was finishing Vet, so I wrote the publisher telling them that “I don’t have any qualification, but I love reading those literary genres and I think I have good English level, so why don’t you send some test text to prove myself”. They sent me the text, they enjoyed the translation and they sent me my first book: Vellum by Hal Duncan in October 2007. I really tried to do my best to honour the work of the author, although I think it was a really difficult book for a science boy like me, a rookie in all this literary world. Ink, my present task, is my second work. I want to apologise Hal if there are some translation mistakes that I didn’t or won’t realize due to my inexperience, and I want to thank him too, because working with his books has made me love my job.

What sort of range of works do you normally translate? Are you mostly focused on English-language genre fiction, or do you translate from other languages, other fields?

I think I’ve answered this in the previous question. As a remark I can say that I’m also in Morocco for learning Arabic and French to open possibilities in my new life of translator.
Do you have a specific approach to a project, a daily routine?

Well, the editor wants from me a mean of 30 pages a week. Apart from that, I’m completely free to organize myself whatever I want. I’ve removed the batteries of the alarm clock and only when Morpheus leaves I meet Hermes to begin my work.

Basically I translate my text (which I’ve previously digitalized) phrase by phrase using Trados and when I finish one chapter I read that entire chapter again in a fast reading looking for some “musicality” in the text. When I have a doubt I mark it with ??? and I leave it until I get the answer from whatever source may be.

When I finish the book I read it all again looking for coherence (every time I read the same text I punish myself: How I can write such nonsenses? How can I be so stupid? Spanish people don’t talk like that, so why don’t I do it better?... and I scourge my back with a lash).

What sort of resources do you turn to? What's the handiest thing in your office?

As I said before, the first thing I do when I get one book is scanning it to get it in Word format.

Mainly, there are two valuable programs I use; without them I don’t know if I would have killed myself with a spoon a long time ago. They’re registered, copyrighted, trade marked and you can “buy” them completely free on emule (I didn’t tell you):

- TRADOS: This tool integrates in Microsoft Word. Basically, it works phrase by phrase (from one dot to next one) bringing you two windows. In first one you have the original text, and in the second one the translation. This is a silly program, that is it don’t have any previous database but it remembers everything you write. Example:

You have "A red house”, and program gives you an empty window. You type “Una casa roja”. Next time “A red house" appears, Trados automatically brings you “Una casa roja” in second window, obviously; but if a similar phrase appears like "A green house", Trados will bring you the most similar phrase in its database, in this case "Una casa roja" and you will only need to put verde instead of roja. The program grows up with you and your way or writing, and when some text repeats on your work you cheer up because virtually you don’t need to work.

- BABYLON: My dearly Babylon, this is a modular dictionary which works on taskbar of Windows. When I have any doubt with a word (in whatever other program, Mozilla, Word, anything running under Windows) I Alt+left mouse click on it and Babylon automatically opens bringing me the translation in English, Italian, French, German, Arabic, Spanish, synonym and antonym and definition in Spanish and, if it’s a number, a conversion chart (measurements, currencies, time...); but, as I said, its modular. You can put and remove a huge selection of dictionaries. It’s my useful lifebelt.

- INTERNET: What can I say? WordReference, Answers, Urban Dictionary, Online Dictionary, RAE... without forgetting Wikipedia and Google, of course. This son of Information Era has provided me the opportunity to work some thousand miles from my bosses. It’s strange, but it gives you quite a freedom sensation.

How much do you think is lost in translation? Do you think there are stylistic effects, for example, that just don't transfer between languages? Do you ever have to choose a looser translation over a more literal one to convey a better sense of what the author's trying to do?

With my little experience translating I can only talk about my troubles with Mr Hal Duncan´s way of writing. In his work I really fear when some Classic stuff appears because it has an equivalent writing in Spanish that I must respect (some old fashioned Spanish).

I also shudder when I see a 20 lines sentence without any f--- dot on it. I assume it’s meant to be read in some frantic way and is quite difficult to find that cadence in Spanish (but it won’t beat me).

There are some wordplay that simply are untranslatable in Spanish, but I’m allowed to express that in some annotations on footer page.

I’d got problems with Irish accent too. I wanted to express it in some way; I tried to emulate it using Basque issues (I think Irish people and Basque people have similarities in their attitude), but the publishers had rejected my idea telling me that a foreign accent is untranslatable. I suppose they’re right, but I don’t like seeing Finnan talking in a perfect Spanish. I’m learning quite well that is inevitable losing some information in translation, though.

About stylistic effects, well, the English way of thinking and therefore way of writing is quite close to Spanish. Literal translation fits perfectly almost in everything (I’m a lucky boy not being Mongol or Swahili, in language disparity terms, of course) with little word order changes in the sentences. Logically, I must adapt set phrases on my own language, and for slang I have Urban Dictionary on the Web. And for the author’s sense, I really try to imagine, to visualize what is written before putting it in my own language. My feelings are a marionette on an emotional rollercoaster when I’m working. It’s easier this way...

Can a work ever gain something in translation? Let's say you're translating a doorstop blockbuster with dodgy prose; how much freedom do you have to fix bad grammar or clunky dialogue? Do you see translation as creative at all?

Am I allowed to talk bad of maese (master in ancient Spa) Duncan MacLeod? No, I’m joking. I really try to emulate everything in whatever I’m translating. I mustn’t express my opinion in my work. For me it's a high creative task to find something in Spanish that sets really close if not perfectly matched with author’s will. It’s some kind of challenge.

Sometimes I change some dots to commas, or I change the order of some allocutions or use different verbal tense looking some cadence that a literal translation can’t obtain, changing slightly the original intentionality of the text, but I’m not saying I’ve found a better way of telling that in English.

In other words, The author is my guru, the author is my leader, loving the author will bring you happiness, let’s praise the divine wisdom of the master, but don’t let your faith blind you. Spanish people are who will read the holy, oh the sacred, word of the author, so let’s make the minimum changes in the book to make it comprehensible for them. For example, translating Ink I’ve found some clear errata in some Spanish writing in the original text. I assumed the author did want to write them correctly, so I put them right, thinking of Spanish readers who will be disappointed with such trivial mistake.

Finally, I don’t like some tricks some colleagues used in some show (actually was South Park) where some American characters who appeared in the Spanish version took Spanish characters names. That wasn’t the intentionality of the authors, and if you don’t know one character or other issue, mister translator, please don’t suppose everybody in your country will either. Please study, mister translator, and leave your pride aside, it doesn’t hurt.

How closely do you generally work with authors whose works you're translating? Without naming any names, have you ever had problems dealing with the writerly ego?

My limited experience sends me again with the creator of Vellum and Ink. Herr Duncan always was very kind and compliant with every little question I’ve made him. He had the idea of give common answers to my French and German colleagues and me —It’s curious, we (including Hal itself) are the representation of four of the more mentioned countries in his books—, and to make this interview, only begging us, as a repayment, to call him Your Highness from now on (it’s only a joke about the writerly ego. There were no problems at all).

[Note: actually it was Hannes's idea to share responses between translators, to give credit where it's due -- Hal]

Apart, of course, from the work of blinding genius / unmitigated folly by yours truly, which book that you've worked on gave you the most pleasure to translate, and which translation are you most pride of? Is there a difference?

I regret to say Monsieur Duncan has little competitors in this question. I enjoyed Vellum and I’m getting really amused with Ink. Why? Am I improving myself in my no-so-good English? Am I improving my way of writing in Spanish (that I’m learning too!)? Am I getting used to the author’s way of writing? Am I getting used to the author’s sickening mind? I can’t answer that nowadays, but I really love how the author turbomixes sooo many different subjects, such prodigality of culture, so discordant and similar, to forge with such energy something like that. Perturbed and rational, careless and sensible —all the interrelations amongst the Vellum!— I’m really proud to try to find the same emotions these books generate in me in my own language.

Sincerely, I don’t know if I like the books the most because I love the work I’m doing or because there were moments in my life I’ve felt like some characters in the books and I feel sheer empathy with the author’s mind. Ego trip.

And on the subject of ego... sorry, I have to ask: as the person who had to translate it, what aspects of VELLUM/INK were a) the biggest problems, and b) the biggest pleasures? Why?

I think I’ve answered this questions in the previous ones. The biggest problems came in from the Classics, Finnan accent and some quotes and wordplays painting black the lust for life of jumpin´ Jack Flash sympathizing for the Devil who’s searching to destroy the sheriff and the deputy too. Kaleidoscope Madness.

I think I have the same reasons for loving these books. They’ve forced me study hard and I really love the screams for freedom —with F instead PH— these books distillate. I feel less strange to myself when I know people —or characters— whose motivations I think I understand and, in some way, I share. I say motivations, not knowledge, because it’s obvious for me Hal Duncan is much wiser than me in a lot of subjects. I really love learning things, so I love his books.

And to stir things up a little... as a reader of the original, if you were also a reader of the translated text rather than the person who created it, what do you think would be your biggest problems and your biggest pleasures with the translation? Would they be the same as with the original?

I really don’t know. For instance “crack of doom” was translated in one way for Shakespeare, in other way for Tolkien and I was obliged to take third option for Duncan. This detail is lost in translation, I really want the editor allows me to put a note about that, but something is lost anyway.

Some expressions can be more accurate in Spanish about using pronoun (you) that in Spanish can be plural with genre differentiation (vosotros-as) or singular (tú) or some respect form (usted-es), but something is lost using the possessives (her-his-its-their) that are resumed in Spanish (su-sus).

Other examples come from words and expressions we have in Spanish but not in English. For instance, “troupe” that is an English word (and a Spanish word too) taken from French has a good substitute in Spanish “farándula” without using foreignness.

I really can’t remember other examples, but there are similar situations that this language allows me to improve the text from the original, in some Spanish way, of course.

And a few wider questions to close things off. Ease of reading aside, do you have any preferences between languages? Are there qualities of the languages themselves that you appreciate?

I don’t really think one language is better than another. They had their natural evolution from the generations of people who talked them, and they’re useful in their surroundings. I’ve heard Norwegian people had 50 ways of naming snow. In Spain we don’t have such close relation with the snow but we have plenty ways of insult people while English people have fuck, shit, whore, fag... don’t know, maybe ten or twenty more.

I think English is a very useful language because it's easy learning, almost stenographic. Verbal tenses are sooo easy in comparison to other languages, and words are so plastic. I mean, one sound, one onomatopoeia, can easily become a noun or verb; one verb can easily become a noun, become an adverb, become an adjective and its interrelations; and English has great capability for creating neologism (only need to see computing world).

In the spirit of internationalism, what writer in your own language (in whatever genre) are we missing out on in the anglophone world because they haven't been translated into English? Or who should we be reading that has been translated? What is it about them that rocks?

I regret I don’t know any Spanish book untranslated in English that could be nice for reading. About translated ones I can’t miss One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez. Sorry if I don’t make any comment, wikiwiki does it great:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude

Another great novel is Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar. Translating this book must have been an enormous torture, because the author played with the language itself in some different ways:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_%28Julio_Cort%C3%A1zar_novel%29

Eduardo Mendoza, Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Miguel Delibes, Pérez-Reverte... I don’t want to type down more writers because I know I’ll miss somebody.

And lastly, do you have any upcoming translation projects you're really looking forward to, or novels that you'd really like to work on if you had the chance?

No, nothing at all. I’m still acclimatizing to my new job and my new city. Maybe in a future I’ll seek some concrete stuff, but at the moment I’ll take thankfully everything the editors would gave me.

Mind Meld -- Gender Imbalance

2008-07-02T13:36:00.003+01:00

SF Signal asked me for some thoughts on gender imbalance within genre fiction, as part of the most recent Mind Meld. The results are here. To be honest, I'm not really sure I'm qualified to talk about such matters. When you don't have to deal with the consequences, it's easy to remain complacent & ignorant in yer privilege; and even if you do have an awareness of the issue, that doesn't equate to insight as to dealing with it. So I'm not really sure I've got anything to say here that hasn't been said a thousand times before (vis-a-vis the backlash bullshit arguments of the reactionaries and the "keep it in yer consciousness" truism); but there are quotes from other pros much more central to the debate. So go read it on that basis.

French Cover Art

2008-06-23T14:15:00.001+01:00

Ain't it pretty.

Hurrahs!

2008-06-18T16:16:00.002+01:00

And in a sweet synchronicity -- I've just found out that Hannes Riffel's German version of VELLUM has been awarded the Kurd Laßwitz Preis for Best Translation 2008. (The original even snuck in at #6 in the Best Foreign Work apparently, which is also well cool.) So a big shout out and tip of the hat to Hannes. Even without reading German I knew just from working with him that the result was gonna be damn fine, so I'm well chuffed that the Powers That Be have recognised the quality of his work.

In short: Hurrahs!

Interview: Hannes Riffel

2008-06-13T19:12:00.003+01:00

Having been posting some of the questions asked by the translators working on Vellum/Ink, I thought it might be cool to turn the tables, and interrogate these guys for a bit. So in the spirit of what's turning out to be Translation Month here at the Geek Show, here's what should be the first of a short series of interviews with the translators of various editions. It's maybe not the most in-depth set of questions ever, but if nothing else, hopefully this'll cast some light on the hard-working people involved in the gnarly process. So without further ado, let's get on with it...

OK, let's start with the basic pimpage -- your name, the language you're translating the book into, which book and for which publisher:

Hi, I'm Hannes Riffel, and I'm trying to transmute Ink into German, after having cut my teeth on Vellum and losing quite a few in the process. It will be published as a paperback by Heyne and before that – hopefully – as a cloth edition in a small print run by Shayol.

Can you give us a little sense of where you live and what it's like. How would you describe it to a would-be visitor from foreign shores?

My wife Sara, an accomplished translator and editor herself, and I live in a 70 year old house in a rural area of East Berlin with a nice garden and way too many books. Sara comes from the countryside a bit further east from here, I come from Freiburg way down south near the border of France and Switzerland. From our kitchen and library windows you can see the tenant building blocks a few streets away to the north, from our studies you can see the garden to the south and not much else. It's nice and quiet most of the time, but not too far from Berlin center (or the centers, as there are quite a few), if it gets too quiet.

What kind of stuff do you get up to when you're not working? Do you write yourself? Any other involvement in the wider scene? Or other scenes, for that matter? Basically, what do you do for kicks?

Well, I have written and published two SF short stories, nothing special, but usually consider myself a craftsman, not an artist. I'll probably stick to translating stuff for the rest of my life, but who knows?

I have been scouting and editing SF for close to ten years now, for different publishers big and small. I moved to Berlin in 1998, am involved with the local fan scene and run a SF small press, Shayol, (www.shayol.de) with some friends here. More important to me is the SF/F/H bookshop Otherland (www.otherland-berlin.de) I run with my best friend Birgit and a bunch of incredibly nice and competent guys who work there mostly for the hell of it. It's good to work on the retail end of things; it keeps you grounded. Oh yeah, and I edit the German SF/F/H magazine Pandora (www.pandora.shayol.de).

Other scenes? I read a lot, lots of mysteries, old Greek dead guys (philosophy, poetry, drama), history, and I try finding some time for that 1500 page Biology text book making up for all the stuff I missed in school. We have lots of friends here in Berlin and like to meet them in bars and pubs. And I try to get back into running regularely, keeping the old body fit for a change.

So, how long have you been translating and how did you get into this line of work?

Close to twenty years now. I first started with the publisher I did my apprenticeship at, translating some juveniles and learning quite a bit in the process. They just needed someone who was better than the guy who had messed up a translation that had to be finished fast, and that, on the surface of things, turned out to be me. When I moved to Berlin I had just quit university the third time and started translating horror stuff to pay the rent (Barker, Lansdale, Brite). The bookshop we opened in Berlin did not make enough money to live on (as we expected), not for two, and so my colleague Birgit and I looked for other work. I was lucky, because smallish publisher Argument was searching for translators for their new SF line, and I got John Shirley and Sean Stewart. Birgit, as it turns out, is now a prize-winning science journalist.

What sort of range of works do you normally translate? Are you mostly focused on English-language genre fiction, or do you translate from other languages, other fields?

English only. I can barely understand a French newspaper and puzzle out letters in ancient Greek. Mostly SF and fantasy, which I try to get out of, just for diversity's sake.

Do you have a specific approach to a project, a daily routine?

I try to do a certain amount of book pages per day – usually ten to fifteen if the book's easy, four to six if it's difficult (like the stuff this Duncan guy writes). Punctuality is more important in this line of work than quality, because publishers spend a lot of money announcing their books to the trade, and if a book is late, especially at a bigger house, that's bad business. So if I do not get my page count done I work on weekends, and that cuts into other, non-paying projects.

I usually start at 9 am, read the stuff I translated the day before and then work away until it's done, usually around 2 to 4 pm. After that I line edit other people's translations or the work of German writers.

What sort of resources do you turn to? What's the handiest thing in your office?

I have the Muret-Sanders on my hard drive, the biggest English-German-English dictionary ever, and there's a great online dictionary called LEO. The Wikipedia is a big help and so are the search engines, because you can check most anything at a moment's notice. Having said that, I own two walls of encyclopedias and other, more specialized reference works plus lots of older lexicons on CD to double check online information. The Britannica, for instance, is still a lot more thorough on a lot of things than Wiki.

How much do you think is lost in translation? Do you think there are stylistic effects, for example, that just don't transfer between languages? Do you ever have to choose a looser translation over a more literal one to convey a better sense of what the author's trying to do?

A lot is lost. I don't want to diss the profession, but it is rare that a translation really comes close to the original. Or maybe that is just me and my constant feeling of inadequacy. Of course much depends on how difficult a text is. You can do a plain old non-fiction text justice, and most fiction is not that impossible either. But with something like Vellum or Ink?

An example: I just finished translating Shriek by Jeff VanderMeer, and that was not an easy book, believe me. But most of the time I got the feeling that my vocabulary and my ability to sling words comes close to what Jeff does. But your work is another matter. There is so much free association and splicing of other texts involved, it's hard to keep up. I would have to be more of an artist and less of a craftsman to really be a match for you. But then who is?

Yes, it's my opinion that you have to depart from the text on a word and syntax level from time to time. Translators discuss and argue over this a lot, and no two of them would agree on a difficult passage. But sometimes you just have to got for that one meaning if you cannot get across the two or three other implications of the original. Or your penchant for alliterations – lose some here, add some somewhere else.

Can a work ever gain something in translation? Let's say you're translating a doorstop blockbuster with dodgy prose; how much freedom do you have to fix bad grammar or clunky dialogue? Do you see translation as creative at all?

Ok, this is one of the few instances where I think the old »high and low« still applies. If the writer really knows what he's doing, stick to the text. If he (or she) is just clunking along, most editors will be very happy if you clean things up.

But real creativity only comes into play with prose (or poetry, but I don't want to get into that) of a higher order. And it's always a walk on the razor's edge – sometimes you fall off in the direction of »not close enough« and sometimes you are too cowardly.

How closely do you generally work with authors whose works you're translating? Without naming any names, have you ever had problems dealing with the writerly ego?

Luckily most writers are just an e-mail away and very happy to be of help. Naturally it is in their best interest to get a good translations. But I sometimes feel I bother a writer like you too much, that I should work harder on finding out stuff on my own. But on the other hand, why don't you write like normal people?

I have had one or two writers telling me to leave them alone or not answering at all, which is their prerogative.

Most writers tend to trust their translators too much, of course. They only see how hard they work and what great questions they ask, without being able to really check the translations. Which is, of course, fine by me. John Shirley once had one of my translations checked by an academic friend; luckily I only heard of this after the fact or I would have been scared out of my mind. And I got no complaints.

Apart, of course, from the work of blinding genius / unmitigated folly by yours truly, which book that you've worked on gave you the most pleasure to translate, and which translation are you most pride of? Is there a difference?

Well, there are quite a few. I have translated half a dozen books by Sean Stewart, and he is a wonderful, vastly underrated writer and a joy to translate. I did the first German translation of Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, of which I'm quite proud.

John Clute's Appleseed was hell to do, but John is a great guy and a good friend, and in hindsight I am rather proud of that book (it won me a Kurd Laßwitz award as best SF translation of the year). And Shriek by Jeff VanderMeer, of course. Jeff's an incredible writer and I am proud to know him and his wife Ann.

And on the subject of ego... sorry, I have to ask: as the person who had to translate it, what aspects of VELLUM/INK were a) the biggest problems, and b) the biggest pleasures? Why?

(a) and (b) are mostly the same passages. I love it when you mix and rap ancient and/or classic texts, but I hate you for it as well. Especially since most of those texts don't have German translations that rhyme, so I have to do the rhyming; or I don't, because original and translation refer to a source, and the German source is different.

I totally love the Jack Flash pulp sequences, but it took me a while to get into the groove of those. And what to do about Finnan's dialect and all the damn useless wordplay on every page (which after the first shock turns out not to be useless, but has an intention behind it or at least sounds great)? I hate you, I fucking hate you, and I stand in awe of every sentence you write and love you for it. As you see, (a) and (b) tend to get mixed up a lot.

And to stir things up a little... as a reader of the original, if you were also a reader of the translated text rather than the person who created it, what do you think would be your biggest problems and your biggest pleasures with the translation? Would they be the same as with the original?

The translation of Vellum (let's talk about Ink when I'm through and my editor has ripped my head off) reads easier than the original. I'm a bit sorry about that, but when I feel I have to make a decision in either direction, I opt for clarity most of the time. Which means German readers get at least one meaning straight. But I think all in all the translation conveys what you intended, in terms of story, language, derailing of expectation, the lift-off from mythology et al. I tell people to read the German first and the original after that, use the translation as a stepping stone. But the translation has garnered quite a bit of praise, so I try not to be overly humble.

And a few wider questions to close things off. Ease of reading aside, do you have any preferences between languages? Are there qualities of the languages themselves that you appreciate?

English is a wonderfully flexible language. You have so many multiple meanings and levels of allusions, it's incredible! German on the other hand is very accurate, very useful for operating instructions. And it is one of the great difficulties of translating from English into German to conflate these qualities. To make matters worse, German has lost a lot of its versatility in recent decades. But I try to read some older writers to work against that.

In the spirit of internationalism, what writer in your own language (in whatever genre) are we missing out on in the anglophone world because they haven't been translated into English? Or who should we be reading that has been translated? What is it about them that rocks?

The only genre writer that has been translated recently is Andreas Eschbach, and his Die Haarteppichknüpfer (The Carpet Makers) has been translated. Read it; it is great. There are two incredible younger writers, Dietmar Dath and Tobias O. Meißner, which you are really missing out on. But the English language market is so flooded with native speakers – why translate stuff at all?

Dath and Meißner are both very versatile writers, using genre tropes to feed the story machine and to comment on life and politics etc. Both are now finally finding a wider audience, so there is hope.

And lastly, do you have any upcoming translation projects you're really looking forward to, or novels that you'd really like to work on if you had the chance?

Well, after Ink, I will swear off difficult books for a while. Their is a short novel by Robert Bloch on the horizon, for which I do not have a contract yet, but it looks very promising. I translated a bunch of stories by Joe Hill (last year) and his dad (this year), both of which are writers I'd like to go back to. And, without trying to ingratiate myself, I enjoyed translating your »Chiaroscurist« very much and would love to try my hand on more shorter Duncan stuff – it seems more feasible to concentrate on something of less than 500 pages ...

Thanks, Hannes!

Next: well... wait and see.

Translation and Style

2008-06-11T22:33:00.002+01:00

In a recent comment on an one of the older entries here, What is Style?, a correspondant, Colin, asks a couple of questions that I thought I'd bring forward, since translation seems to be the current topic on the Geek Show.

In that entry, as in the Strange Sentences essay, I argue that the packaging/content metaphor of style/substance is bogus. As readers we seek to "extract" insight or entertainment from a work; we conceptualise the text as a "vessel" for theme and/or plot; we imagine that text as a sort of "skin" of prose with theme and/or plot "within"; we imagine theme and/or plot as a sort of deep structure, an articulation of bone and flesh "upon" which, "around" which, that prose is crafted, the "surface" we must "dig under" to get at the Meaning and/or Story. Ultimately, if we conceptualise the surface of prose as a "finish", we may well conceptualise the syntactic and lexical patterns that distinguish it as a largely decorative and superficial "patina".

This is a spatial metaphor. It is only a metaphor. Here's how it really works:

The substance of a work of fiction is the words. These are the stuff from which it is made. At the lowest-level those words are selected and structured into sentences which generally exhibit distinct features of syntax and lexicon, patterns of low-level articulation we commonly refer to as "style". Words are built into sentences, which are built into paragraphs, which are built into scenes, which are built into narratives. The selection and structuring that goes on at this higher-level of articulation leads to distinct features of narrative dynamics, patterns of drama* we might well refer to as "style" but generally do not (regardless of the fact that they are characteristic of a writer's work, maybe even their ouvre, and therefore reproducable by another writer trying to work in a similar "style").

In the act of reading we interpret that articulation, we construct these entirely imaginary things in our head -- character, plot and theme.

The point of this? The very things we label content -- character, plot and theme -- are in fact only superficial glosses of this articulated structure, crude outlines which re-present the complex drama of the text in broad summaries. Words are the cells. Sentences, paragraphs, scenes are the arrangements of those cells into tissues, organs, structures and systems, the very real and perceptible substance of the articulated organism that is a text. Character, plot and theme -- these are stickman drawings of that articulation, sketches which seek to encapsulate and convey a reader's sense of it, an artist's impression. The more detailed they are, the better they function as the representations they are, but they may well be rudimentary and reductionist. A paragraph-long description of a novel's plot may be representing the content of that novel about as well as a child who lays his hand on a piece of paper and draws a single line around it with a purple crayon is representing the anatomical substance of that hand. A description of the theme may be like a stickman drawing of a hand by the same child, a rough circle with five lines sticking out of it for fingers. Even if the representation is detailed and accurate it is only a representation and it is only a representation of the reader's reading, the abstract interpretive experiencing of the text.

Which leads us to the question(s):

Ah - but how do translations work, then? How can we clothe that structure with different cells and produce the same emergent phenomenom?

The anti-style argument is that the text's purpose is to "carry" Meaning and/or Story, that the prose through which plot and/or theme are articulated is only a means to an end. If its key function is as a "vessel", we can judge it according to how well it performs this task -- bearing in mind that "style" is of no real value in this (metaphoric) model other than as a "finish". If the prose is highly patterned but does not enable the easy reconstruction of a clear Meaning and/or Story, the anti-stylists will decry it as badly-wrought, decorative but deficient. In fact, they will see it as deficient because it is decorative, fabricating a How the Writer Went Wrong story in which a concentration on "style" led to a neglect of "substance".

This argument takes for granted that a different articulation could be substituted, that a different "vessel" could be crafted to "carry" the same Meaning and/or Story. As far as the anti-stylists are concerned, this prose "vessel" should all but eschew syntactic and lexical patterning for the sake of clarity. Hence we arrive at the term "transparent prose" as an extrapolation of that spatial metaphor. If prose is only a "packaging" of the "content", that "packaging" can be made "transparent" so it does not "obscure" the "content".

I call bullshit on this. Obviously a writer can minimise syntactic and lexical patterning in their prose, and obviously this is a good strategy for making the prose more instantly parseable. And the more instantly parseable the prose, the easier it is to integrate into the ongoing interpretative process, the easier it is for the reader to construct those abstract artifices of character, plot and theme. The result is, however, an entirely different articulation. The words are different, the sentences are different, the paragraphs are different, the scenes are different and therefore, inevitably and unquestionably, the narrative is different. Indeed, if we appreciate that the drama of the text is wholly a matter of the higher-level patterns of articulation, that these are features of the text itself, that to summarise the manifest complexities of that drama is to reduce it to vague generalities, then ultimately we must admit that the very plot and theme are different. Which is to say, if we construct these summary representations in enough detail, the process of interpretative reconstruction eventually leads us to the low-level syntax and lexicon of the text itself. One subtle detail, a single word-choice, may change the drama of the narrative radically.

And a translator has to deal with that.

In a very real sense, any translation is a different narrative because it is inevitably a different text. Different languages have different syntaxes and lexicons, which is bound to fuck with any low-level patterning based on poetical/rhetorical repetitions of sounds and structures. Where that sort of patterning is a matter of voice -- sentence-level style used as a way of subtly reinforcing point-of-view by mimicking a character's manner of articulation in the narrative itself, or by imbuing an absent narrator with their own distinct manner of articulation -- this is going to alter the drama of the narrative profoundly and pervasively.

But a good translator is going to do their best to replicate that voice in so far as it's possible. The opening of VELLUM has one character, Jack, describing the sort of scene you get in old Hollywood epics, where an old parchment map is seen "getting darker and darker in the centre, crisping, crinkling until suddenly it just... fwoom." In the German edition, translator Hannes Riffel renders this as "schwärzer und schwärzer wird, knittert und knautscht, bis sie plötzlich einfach... wuuusch!" If there's a loss here of the acoustic qualities of the "cr" alliteration on "crisping, crinkling" -- the hint of an onomatopeic crackle of flame -- Jack's relish of that image is nevertheless captured, I think, in the substitute alliteration of "knittert und knautscht". And there's actually an extra assonance added in the "sch" and "w" of "schwärzer" echoed (and reversed) in the "w" and "sch" of "wuuusch".

So...

Do translations, actually, work...?

I can't imagine a perfect translation. The best translation, it seems to me, can replicate the narrative pretty damn well, translating the literal meaning but also doing its best to translate the low-level and high-level articulation in which voice and drama are grounded and out of which the "emergent phenomen" of character, plot and theme are constructed. I'm not sure, in fact, that as a writer I wouldn't prefer a translator of VELLUM or INK to be willing to sacrifice accuracy now and then if a less literal translation on the sentence-for-sentence level would result in a better articulation in terms of voice and drama.

What's kind of interesting to me, actually, is the idea that where a strictly direct translation may be impoverished in proportion to its failure to replicate the qualities of voice and drama manifest in the patterning of the text, a more ambitious translation which seeks to reproduce these in another language may, in the end, result in a narrative that is no less rich as a work but is nonetheless different, subtly so in some respects, radically so in others. As someone who likes the idea of "translating" ancient myths and classical plays or poetry into different idioms, not as a superficial rearticulation of the basic plot and theme -- as if the original text were only a vessel for Meaning and/or Story -- but as a sort of... palimpsest of permutations, I find that whole idea deeply appealing. Hell, THE BOOK OF ALL HOURS ought to exist in multiple variants.

Could one say that the more similar the emergent product of a translation (i.e. the structure it builds in a reader's head) the less the so-called epithet "stylist" (in the pejorative sense) could be applied to a particular author?

The simple answer, it seems to me, is yes. Allowing for the subtle/radical differences in voice and drama that may be inevitable in the shift from one language to another, there's a point here: that if a translation has to replicate the "style" of a work, to the best of their ability, in order to achieve the same reading experience, in order for a reader to reconstruct, from the voice and the drama manifest in this entirely different set of words, sentences, paragraphs and scenes, a narrative that works in the same way, then that "style" is far from superfluous and superficial.

Naturally, if the original is written in that strictly referential style we call "transparent prose", if there is little or no patterning in the prose that actually manifests voice and drama, only a straight recitation of a sequence of events, the point is moot; the translation would simply be another straight recitation of the same sequence of events, and the emergent product would probably (one expects) be fairly similar... but the writer would not be called a "stylist" anyway in this case.

In fact, if the strict referentiality of "transparent prose" makes it easier to create a translation that results in the same reading experience, if a reader of the German edition is able to construct the same Meaning and/or Story as a reader of the French edition largely because the prose is designed with no function other than the delivery of its denotative "content", this is precisely because a straight recitation is a flat recitation.

I mean, if the prose is only a means to an end, if it's only purpose is to enable the reader to construct this... outline drawing of a child's hand in purple crayon, it's not like the prose actually has to have any depth. Depth is only required if you want the reader to appreciate the work as an actual textual articulation -- as a static composition of a narrative and as the dynamic process of that narrative being played through. In that latter case, the very enjoyment resides in the word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence (re)creation of the text in the imagination.

It comes from seeing the 3D image develop layer by layer, moment by moment, like an image on a scanner morphing from cross-section to cross-section. You see a dot that grows to become the circle of a fingertip, flattened and edged at the top with the thin line of a nail. Another circle appears to one side of it, then a third circle on the other side. You don't know that these are fingers yet; you don't put the image together in your head even as the bone becomes visible at the centre of each circle, still don't realise what's going on as the pinky comes in. The vertical cross-section moves on over joints though, towards the knuckles, and you start to suspect. A fifth circle comes in way off to one side -- the thumb. Suddenly you're over the knuckles and these four circles have joined together, fused by the flesh of the hand, but still with the distinct bone structure. The thumb is getting closer now, the last piece of the puzzle moving into place. When it all comes together, when the scan is complete, when you have the last cross-section where the hand ends and the wrist begins, you can switch view, look at the model of the hand in three dimensions, turn it this way and that. Look at it from one angle, from above, as if it was laid flat on a piece of paper, and what you see is the general outline of it, the plot.

With transparent prose that process of articulation is not the point. The only point is to give the reader all they need to construct that outline and no more. And all they actually need is a single horizontal section slicing through the hand about halfway down, between back and palm. All you need is that two-dimensional image printed out line by line on a dot matrix printer. First the curve of one finger appears, then another, then another. You don't see the nails because they're not in this cross-section, but who cares? That's just superfluous detail. The image of flesh and bone is built up in rough dots of black ink on white paper. It's kinda fuzzy, but who cares? It's the end result that matters. And in the end you have your blurred black-and-white image of a hand, with enough internal detail to satisfy the undemanding reader. Hey, at least the plot is blindingly obvious. You could pick up a crayon and draw over the outline of that hand right there and then.

Or you could redraw that image in another colour, blue ink instead of black, or in another medium entirely, paint on canvass, chalk and charcoal, scan it and email it for a reader in another language to print out on their full-colour laser printer. That translation will in all likelihood create the same emergent product as it is rattled out of the printer line by line in another edition, in another country, for another reader. Hell, the handiwork (no pun intended) of the translator might actually tidy up some of the blotchy fuzziness born of the writer's disregard for the subtleties of prose. I wonder how many translations of THE DA VINCI CODE correct that glaring inconsistency on the first page or so where, in the same line, at the same time, a character "freezes" while "turning his head". This is bad prose rather than transparent prose, strictly speaking, but it is born of the functionalist aesthetic at its most pragmatic, a "that'll do" attitude in which the writer may well know those two things can't happen simultaneously, but, hey, the reader will get what I mean, right? They'll understand what I'm trying to say, and that's all you need with prose that is only a means to an end. No point spending time looking for a more apt word than "freezes" or a grammatical construction that actually relates those actions sensibly; the prose doesn't have to be polished, doesn't have to do the job well, just has to get it done.

This is superficiality in writing if anything is. Those low-level details of syntax and lexicon are all about adding an extra dimension to the prose, giving the reader a series of 2D cross-sections to reconstruct rather than a series of 1D lines of printed dots. Imagine each line of printed dots appearing in the rapid sweep off the printer's head from left to right, each dot a word, each line a sentence. This is the linear experience of reading transparent prose. Now imagine each cross-section appearing on the screen in a similar way, the image manifesting in the left-right sweep of a sentence being read -- except each word is not a dot but a vertical line of pixels. The experience is still linear but each word has an added dimension of meaning, a dimension that reveals more structure, more substance.

A fingertip in transparent prose: space; flesh; bone; flesh; space. A fingertip written with "style": space; flesh; a column of flesh topped with keratin; bone with flesh below and above topped with keratin; a column of flesh topped with keratin; flesh; space. The first image is rudimentary, lacking in detail. The second, with its extra dimension, tells us that the flesh before the bone is joined to the flesh after the bone, encases the bone above and below, surrounds it, and that there's a thin line of keratin running along the top of this fleshy thing.

By giving us the flesh above and below the bone the cross-section tells us the whole thing is one unified structure... just as stylistic choices of lexicon and syntax unify parts of sentence by giving the whole thing features that are persistent throughout it, textual characteristics as signifiers of consistency, markers of the voice in which it is all being articulated. It's the difference between a sentence like "The woman was very attractive," versus a sentence like, "The babe was frickin hot."

By adding that depth, the cross-section even adds the detail of the fingernail that is completely absent in the first representation... just as additional meanings are generated by selecting words with specific connotations and acoustic consonances in place of words which simply carry out a basic denotative function. It's the difference between a phrase like "dog with mange" and "mange-ridden mutt".

There's nothing wrong with transparent prose, of course, in so far as it's the writer's choice what they want to write and the reader's choice what they want to read. The prose is just a means to an end for some. All they actually want is that dot matrix print-out that does the job for them. The whole 3D imaging malarky? Hell, that's actually a bit over-complicated for their liking. Reconstructing those cross-sections into a form in their imagination is too much hassle. That extra dimension only makes it more confusing. They're not sure which angle you're meant to look at it to find that all-important plot. For some of them, in fact, that extra dimension means it doesn't have a plot at all... because it doesn't have an outline clearly delineated in black ink. And that's fair enough. It's not my bag; hell, I think it makes for an intrinsically shallower form of literature. But each to their own; there's nothing wrong with wanting pure entertainment. Just don't spin me some bullshit about how the work you don't get is "style over substance"

In fact, if we imagine theme as the skeletal structure of the hand as revealed in that dot-matrix print-out, I'd say (partly just for the mischief of it) that the philosophers are worse than the philistines in some respects, when they fall into the old "style over substance" hokum. When one reads a work for the "content" of theme, for Meaning, seeking "substance" in a skeletal substructure, this is just as reductionist as reading a work for the "content" of plot, for Story. If plot is an outline in purple crayon around that dot-matrix print-out of the hand, theme is only the bones of the narrative, sliced horizontally on that flat print-out, and filled in with a pink highlighter. And any intellectualism that loses it when you add the third dimension, that can't deal with the ligaments and sinews, cartilage and muscle, all that "style" that makes the underlying skeleton harder to make out... well, that's kind of a shallow intellectualism. I mean, there's nothing wrong with wanting a bit of insight. Just don't spin me some bullshit about how the work you don't get is "style over substance".

Admittedly, I'm kind of thrawn in this respect. The whole "style over substance" argument just makes me want to write some mad shit that can't be made sense if you don't allow for that third dimension. Like a 3D image of a hand only with the fingers curled into a fist, so it's just a big fricking knuckly lump if you're looking at the outline and a ball of bones all folded over one another if you're looking at the skeleton.

Or maybe with one finger left sticking out. The middle finger, obviously.

********

*A definition of "drama" as technical and precise as those of "syntax" and "lexicon" is, I think, possible within a model of narrative dynamics grounding Todorov's theory of equilibrium (and disruption) in a system which models the interplay of subjunctivity levels and modalities (boulomaic, deontic and epistemic). Notions of plot and theme would not feature in this definition. Characters and settings would, but only in so far as these function as textually-delimited agencies and environments to which those subjunctivity levels and modalities are attached.

More Lost in Translation

2008-06-05T20:15:00.002+01:00

So here's some more questions, this time from Luis Gallego, the Spanish translator, who's also kindly agreed to let me post 'em.

Pg 33: CAVOR-REICHS. mmmm... mmmmm... don´t know why.

Ahhh. That would be from Professor Cavor and Cavorite (H.G. Wells) and Wilhelm Reich, the mad scientist behind the theory of orgone energy.

Pg 37: HELLION. Is there a reason for that, some allusion I can´t see? I tell you that because I´ve discovered birdman last week and I wonder if you use 'birdman' in your book for that reason and if hellion have similar allusions.

I used it as a pun on “Hellene”, meaning “hellraiser / troublemaker” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hellion) but with the idea that it suggests “inhabitant of Hell”. I didn’t think of the comics reference at all, to be honest. The “Birdman” cartoon, however, I remember with great fondness from a childhood spent watching this:

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=NF1wg77F8bw

Though the main idea there was just to have Finnan use the word to trivialise the unkin that see themselves as “angels”.

pg 40: SOOTH-SIMILE. I´ve the same doubts with those names.

There’s a vague theme of the puns in this part of the book relating to myth, drama, literature and such – I was going for a hint of a metafictiony thing, I guess. So Thebes becomes Themes, Zeus becomes Sooth (as in soothsayer) and Semele becomes Simile. I’ve *no* idea how that could be translated. If there are puns in Spanish that might work in place of these, nouns that sound similar to the names, I kinda think that would work better than literal translations of the puns I use. Even if they have a different meaning, well, I was kinda trying to use the randomness of similar sounds to find new meaning in the chance associations... if that makes sense. So if there was a way to do something similar in Spanish, that would be cool. I kinda like the idea of different translations being subtly different in that respect.

But this is where my way of writing becomes a bastard to translate, isn’t it? Sorry.

pg 58: BOSCH. Dutch???

[ORIGINAL RESPONSE:]“Bosch” was British WW1 slang for the Germans. I don’t know where it came from and it might well have been a totally idiotic thing to call them, but it was pretty common. Feel free to just use “the German(s)” where appropriate or whatever Spanish term would be apt – assuming there is one.

[REVISED RESPONSE COURTESY OF HANNES*:] Turns out I was talking nonsense about “Bosch”. The proper spelling is “Boche”. I’d got the word confused with the chemical company because they had a big factory near where I grew up. So I heard it as a kid and always assumed it was the same spelling as the chemical company.

[*One of the good things about the translation process is finding out about all the little gaffes that slipped through. So when I shared my responses with Hannes he picked up on the Bosch/Boche gaff and clued me up on it. Oh well, says I. May as well expose my ignorance for all the world to see. You may now point and laugh.]

Lost in Translation

2008-05-28T16:50:00.001+01:00

A while back I posted, for interest's sake, some of my responses to questions sent by the German translator of VELLUM, Hannes Riffel. Now, Hannes is working on INK and has kindly agreed to let me do the same again. I think it's a neat way to give an insight into the intricacies of the translation process and cast a little pen-light on some of the details without too much blather and self-importance (some of those "details" being, after all, fuck-ups and follies on my part.) Though anyone who hasn't read INK yet might want to beware of spoilers. Anyway, all page numbers are from the UK edition.

p 30: "We only tried to give you what you want ... the meaning of fiction in your factual lives." I don't understand the second half.

It's a nihilist/existentialist thing. Facts have no "meaning". Life has no "meaning". Only fiction has meaning. So the bitmites have reshaped the factual world so it has the meaning of fiction -- heroes, villains and all that jazz.

p 35: "strands of skandas" Hindu god? But what are the "strands" (dto.: "skanda strands" on page 38)

In Buddhist philosophy the five skandas (with a small "s") are what makes up the self. See this link:

http://www.urbandharma.org/ibmc/ibmc2/selves.html

I'm not clear on some of the distinctions a Buddhist would make between "physical form", "sensation", "perception", "conception" and "consciousness" (like between sensation and perception or conception and consciousness), but the idea here is of the self being separable into strands (streams, the discrete but interwoven, linear *experience*) of feelings, thoughts, memories, ideas, and so on. The idea is that in the post-Evenfall Vellum it's not just the world that's been deconstructed; humans have too. So you get these wraithike scraps of torn-up identity, strands of skanda.

And (just as an add-on) you get some of those strands that have woven themselves back together into the semblance of agency, the sylphs. But it's a multiple perspective agency, skanda strands of memory from multiple origins -- hence the shift from third person to first-person plural. And you get other skanda strands which have attached themselves to a semblance of form but remain, to all intents and purposes, lacking in that agency, bereft of any real consciousness; those are the shabtis.

p 36: "faun" -- is that a colour as well?

Oops. That's meant to be "fawn", which is, yes, a shade of brown. Bollocks, I always get the baby deer and the mythical creature confused.

p 36: "king" among all those animals means what?

Exactly what it says. King's are just another "noble beast" to be skinned and stitched into the harlequin's suit, far as Jack's concerned. The logic is sort of: well, kings claim the divine right to rule, claim to be distinct from common humanity, with their "blue blood" and all; so, if they have *different colour blood*, they're, like, a different species altogether; so that makes it OK to hunt them down, kill them like the animals they are, and wear their hide like you'd wear the leather of a cow. There's a sort of whimsical notion of hubris at play there, in the idea that the very act of setting yourself up as a king is an invitation to be slaughtered as a beast. It's also a foreshadowing of Pentheus's death at his mother's hands, the way she sees him as a lion to be hunted.

p 37: "city known as Themes" -- any allusions in this name I should know about?

Thebes >> Themes in the rewrite of THE BACCHAE, as an allusion to "theme" in literary terms. It's part of the whole wordplay-system, like Rome becoming Rhyme, Greece becoming Verse and so on, in the historical texts excerpted in the faery chapter of VELLUM.

Eurovision

2008-05-27T08:50:00.001+01:00

First off, Spain's entry. Keep a careful eye on the backing dancer in pink. WTF?! Did she have a stroke halfway through? Is it a set-up or is she on something? Who can say? All I know is this is good old-fashioned Eurovision nonsense as it's meant to be done. Only thing is that means it has, by definition, a really high stupidness/irritation factor. Also the singer loses points, despite the mad-uncle-trying-to-do-a-Zappa-impersonation-in-an-Elvis-wig look, for talking rather than singing.

Next we have France's entry. It's like the Flaming Lips! But with helium! Good song, good madness quotient (nice beard action on the backing singers, and listen for the singer's random pitch alterations even regardless of the helium), but... well, it's just a little too knowingly arch and ironic. I'm sorry, but the Eurovision is no place for pomo indie hipsters. Also, a French Eurovision entry that's not in French! Feh! What would France Gall say? Was "Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son" in English? No, I think not! And that had dwarves dressed as babies!

At number three we have Azerbaijan. It's angel meets devil in a Goth rock spectacular! "It's scary," according to the Boy Kitten (though I think he means in an "American children's beauty pageant" way rather than a "watching The Shining on acid" way), but just listen to that opening falsetto, I say! Great costumes, right down to the coloured contact lenses (nice detail!). Costume change for the devil, in fact! Yes, this year the Azerbaijanis out-rocked the Finns, who just didn't quite cut it in the Overblown Rocktastica stakes (sorry, my Nordic amigos). Still, it's clearly proven now, I'd say, that all Goth rock must be sung in a guttural Eastern European accent. So it has been spoken, so it shall be done!

In second place: Latvia. Pirates! Pirates, pirates, pirates, pirates, pirates!!!! "We will steal the show! Jolly Rogers ho! Pirates are what we will be!" How could you not love them? Listen to that unbearably catchy and anthemic chorus. Look, the main singer even has a prop sword! They have the verve. They have the vigour. having missed a few of the entries at the start of the show, this was originally my top choice. I mean... it's pirates! I know there'll be some of you out there thinking, but the pirate craze is over, dude. That's so last year. Well, fuck that shit. Arrrrrr, I say. Arrrrrrrrr!

"But how could the pirates not win?" I hear you ask. "What could possibly be better than Baltic pirates with fake swords and really bad singalong tunes? Well, folks, the winner is... and imagine the drumroll here... Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's just... I don't know what to say... madder than badgers and catchier than chlamydia. I mean, honestly, it's a fucking great song. Plus it's in Foreign! (Croatian? Maybe Serbian? I don't know. But they definitely get extra points for their blithe disregard for Anglocentrism) Plus the lead singer is like some bastard offspring of Captain-Sensible and that guy from Sparks (only coy instead of creepy). Plus the mad woman dancing in the background is like KatieJane Garside's lunatic second cousin. Watch the bit where she runs down towards the audience to throw the bouquets over her shoulders! Watch it again! Isn't it awesome? Huh? Huh? Isn't it? And her flailing flapping stompy kiddy dance. Yes, as shocking as it may sound coming from me, this is better than pirates!

The Green Fields of France

2008-05-13T17:42:00.001+01:00

Julie K. Rose interviewed me recently for her Writers and Sountracks podcast which ye'll find links to here on the associated blog. The interview won't be up for a while, but doing it got me thinking. One of the songs I put on the soundtrack is a song I remember from childhood, "The Green Fields of France" by Eric Bogle. My dad, as I recall, used to play one of the more traditional folk versions of this quite a lot, either The Fureys or The Corries, I guess, and I guess in a lot of ways it sort of sunk in, permeated my consciousness, and may well have a lot to do with the attitude to WW1 and war in general that comes through (rather strongly, I suspect) in VELLUM.

Anyway, as a result, having not heard the song in donkey's years, I thought I'd track down the lyrics which I only had the vaguest memory of, and see if the song itself was floating about on YouTube. And it was. Better still, I hadn't realised there's actually a Dropkick Murphys version of it. I'm not entirely averse to a bit of folk, but this more ragged and bitey version is definitely more up my street. I still think it's a fucking awesomely powerful song, so I thought I'd share it with yez. The two videos are both yer standard YouTube montage thingy, but I think their both pretty good. With the first, I think it's nicely put together, and I kinda found myself getting quite emotional towards the end. The second is rougher round the edges, and it uses some imagery that's not for the faint-hearted, to be honest, so be wared before you watch it. But I think the very end images of Curious George, the Chimp Who Became President, is... well... highly apt.

And the lyrics... well... they speak for themselves.

O, how do you do, young Willy McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart you're forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play The Last Post and Chorus
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest

The sun shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard that's still no mans land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation were butchered and damned

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play The Last Post and Chorus
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest

And I can't help but wonder oh Willy McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
Did you really believe that this war would end wars
Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh, Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and AGAIN

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play The Last Post and Chorus
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest

SF Promised Me a Flying Car

2008-05-11T20:32:00.003+01:00

I want it, and I want it NOW!

One like this:

Post-Weird Thoughts

2008-05-11T03:27:00.001+01:00

Just a quick heads-up: looks like there's a new blog that readers of me strange-fictional ramblings might find interesting, by Jacques Barcia and Fabio Fernandes. It's called Post Weird Thoughts, and you'll find it here.

As you were.

More Pretentiousness

2008-04-29T19:32:00.002+01:00

Just after the post on pretentiousness the other day, funny enough, a perfect example (in terms of usage) popped up, in the form of a review by Abigail Nussbaum in the latest issue of Strange Horizons. To be clear, this is far from being the most heinous example. I certainly wouldn't put it in the same class as the sort of philistine anti-intellectualism we find all too often in genre, the populism that celebrates the most hackeneyed and formulaic while decrying any hint of ambition as pretension. In fact, I want to explore it precisely because it comes from a sector of the field that seems about as far away from that viewpoint as it's possible to get in genre terms. The point is that this charge is not confined to the populists, but rather pervasive throughout the discourse.

So, here's where the charge surfaces in one paragraph of that review:

"This would not be a problem were it not for the fact that The Raw Shark Texts has pretensions of cleverness. Hall uses typographic games, illustrations, multiple fonts and letter sizes, and, at the novel's climax, a 50-page flipbook drawing of a shark swimming closer made entirely out of letters. One gets the impression that these devices all struck him as terribly inventive and playful, and that The Raw Shark Texts is bucking for a spot on the experimental section of the bookshelf, alongside Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves or even Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man. Sadly, in terms of its execution and the actual level of intelligence in evidence in the novel, a more useful comparison would be to the novels of Jasper Fforde."

This seems fair enough at first glance, right? But let's work through it, bit by bit.

"This would not be a problem were it not for the fact that The Raw Shark Texts has pretensions of cleverness."

There's a subtle conflation of the work and the writer here. If the work is an inanimate object, is it actually capable of having pretensions of cleverness, of deluding itself and/or intending to delude the reader into ascribing an intellectual agility that is not actually there? Or should we really be reading this charge as a meta-criticism of the writer projected onto the work -- i.e. an assertion that the work is evidence that Hall has pretensions of cleverness? To be fair, it's not entirely unconventional to describe works as pretentious (when they manifest the pretentiousness of the writer) or clever (in the sense of skillfully and intricately wrought) but both terms are far more conventionally applied as assessments of intellectual agencies rather than their non-sentient products. The result of this conflict of conventions? The sentence gains a subtext: that the writer is deluding himself and seeking to delude the reader into an erroneous belief in his cleverness.

"Hall uses typographic games, illustrations, multiple fonts and letter sizes, and, at the novel's climax, a 50-page flipbook drawing of a shark swimming closer made entirely out of letters."

The markers of this pretentiousness are, of course, deviations from convention. There's no aversion to syntactic or semantic unconventionality here, but structural experimentation, techniques that breach the consistency of the prose form itself, are read as indices of these pretensions of cleverness. Which is to say, this tricksiness is taken as evidence of trickery, a performative artifice aimed at an illusion of significance, an inflated sense of import. These techniques are offered not as illustrations of cleverness, remember, but as illustrations of pretensions of cleverness.

"One gets the impression that these devices all struck him as terribly inventive and playful..."

To all intents and purposes, this confirms that the core charge is being levelled at the writer rather than the work. I'm not entirely behind the idea of the Intentional Fallacy (the author may be dead, but their work stands as a monument to those intentions, their aesthetic stance outlined in the books-long epitaph under their name), but this is, when it comes down to it, projection as criticism, a meta-argument based on a spurious imagining of the writer at work, sitting down at the word processor, fiddling with this approach or that, and ultimately being overwhelmed by the sense of their own wondrous cleverness. With the arch and dismissive tone added by the "all" and the "terribly", it is clear that this is being viewed as prideful folly -- though not so much the posturing conceit encoded in other accusations of pretentiousness, more the sort of self-infatuated quality-blindness of the amateur trying to run before he can walk. The tone might be read as condescending but it's not contemptuous.

"... and that The Raw Shark Texts is bucking for a spot on the experimental section of the bookshelf, alongside Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves or even Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man."

Of course, the ultimate aim, according to this projection of authorial folly, is an elevated status. To be sure, the sense here is ambiguous, deeply so. We could read the above as simply saying that the book is aimed at a particular sector of the market ("the experimental section of the bookshelf"), intended to be read as in the tradition of these other two works, sitting "alongside" them in terms of aesthetic approach. But that "alongside" can equally be read as signifying ranking, suggesting that the book (and by extension the writer) seeks to be considered as on a par with rather than simply in the same form as the works of Danielewski and Bester. And the phrase "bucking for a spot" pushes us toward that latter interpretation rather forcefully, the idiom overwhelmingly suggestive of a status claim, an attempt to gain a position of relative advantage, of prestige.

"Sadly, in terms of its execution and the actual level of intelligence in evidence in the novel, a more useful comparison would be to the novels of Jasper Fforde."

All I'll note here is the contrast set up between the "actual level of intelligence" and the "pretensions of cleverness" . It seems clear to me that this is the core criticism being articulated here -- of artifice and (if not arrogance then at least) affectation. A false presentation of dubious motivation, seeking to generate an inflated sense of relative value.

At this point, to give due credit, the review moves swiftly on to the actual faults of the work as evidenced in the text, with a perfectly valid example of some appallingly clunky prose. Without having read the book myself, from this and other responses I've read or heard, I don't see any reason to challenge the assessment of the book as flawed, overly concerned with typographical tricksiness to the detriment of other literary qualities, and to the detriment of the book as a whole. And in so far as the paragraph quoted above is only a small part of an otherwise grounded evaluation of the book in terms of those qualities -- theme, plot, prose, etc. -- this is by no means the sort of glib condemnation we often find encoded in a phrase like "pretensions of cleverness". But I do think that if we unpack it what we find is a somewhat dubious projection of little real value in critique.

In fact, to go back to the first line of that paragraph, the whole charge strikes me as at odds with the rest of the review. An initial lukewarm appraisal of the book in the preceding text touches on real issues; thematically the book is not "really about anything", just "an entertaining adventure yarn", and one with a fairly familiar plot at that. Following this with the assertion that, were it not for the pretentiousness, "[t]his would not be a problem" simply derogates these concerns and highlights the unconventional techniques in order to craft a story we might title How the Writer Went Wrong. The story goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a writer. One day he discovered a golden technique and he thought to himself, Why, I could write a book using this! But the golden technique had been enchanted with a wicked glamour, so when the writer used it he'd look back at what he'd written and all he would see was the golden technique. Why, this is wonderful! he'd think, not realising that everything around the golden technique was grey and dull. He couldn't see that for the glint of the gold! And the more he wrote, the more wonderful it seemed. How clever of me, he'd say, to have discovered this golden technique. Won't everyone be so impressed with me when I show them my book!

Finally the day came when the book was finished, and he looked at it and thought to himself, Why, this is the most wondrous book that was ever written, and all thanks to the golden technique. So he took it round to a friend's house to show him. Look! he said. Look at the wondrous book I've written. Look at how clever it is with all the golden technique in it. Aren't I clever for discovering it? But his friend looked at the book, and saw only a patchwork of dull grey bits and bobs all jumbled higgledy-piggledy, and held together -- but only just -- by slender threads of golden technique that snapped if you as much as touched them. And his friend shook his head sadly. No, he said. Not really.

End of story.

This is, however, only a story, a fiction of how the writer went wrong rather than an analysis of how the work goes wrong. There is no assessment made of whether and how these tricks succeed or fail on their own terms, what direct effects the reading of them has on the book as a whole, only a vague supposition that it was the writer's focus on this aspect that led to his neglect in other areas. That Danielewski and Bester did not fall victim to the same "pretensions of cleverness" in adopting similar techniques indicates that this is not an inevitable result. That the review's reasoned critique of "poor writing, indifferent characterization, and predictable plotting" situates the main faults of the book in other areas entirely, in fact, begs the question of why we should lay the blame here at all. Why should we even suppose that there is some reason for these flaws other than a lack of skill in precisely those areas?

As I say, I don't have any great beef with the review as a whole; I don't see that How the Writer Went Wrong narrative, in this instance, as much more than... a bum note. I don't think a little meta-textual impressionism in a review is entirely a bad thing even. My reasons for picking this out as an example are because it came along fortuitously, because there's the meat of critique in there to contrast with that narrative, and because using this sort of review surely cuts across the us-and-them rhetoric of "elitists" and "populists". Where I think it becomes a problem is where that How the Writer Went Wrong narrative is presented less as an "impression" and more as a fundamental assumption, where it becomes an axiomatic parable about the perils of ambition.

Links

2008-04-28T11:17:00.004+01:00

I can't decide which is funnier:

Stuff White People Like

OR

Stuff God Hates

I just can't decide.