{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/106",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 106,
    "subject": "Language and the New Sun",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1992-10-14T17:08:37+00:00",
    "last": "1992-10-14T17:08:37+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v17-544-2@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "G.D. Rees",
        "address": "gdr11 at phx.cam.ac.uk"
      },
      "date": "1992-10-14T17:08:37+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Language and the New Sun",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "cet1 at cus.cam.ac.uk (C.E. Thompson) writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "1. In TSOTT, in Thecla's story, as retold by Severian to Agia in the\n   Botanic Gardens, Father Inire is made to say to Domnina: \"Yet even\n   though light is so weightless we have given its name to that\n   condition...\". This pun only makes sense in English or *very* closely\n   related languages, as far as I can trace the derivation of the words\n   light (opposite of heavy) vs. light (opposite of dark).\n\n2. In TCOTC, Thea says to Severian: \"The dawn-men ... renamed it [Mars]\n   Present. That was a jest in their tongue for the same word meant both\n   _Now_ and _The Gift_. Or so one of my tutors once explained the matter\n   to my sister and me, though I do not see how any language could endure\n   such a confusion.\"\n\nSo how is one to reconcile the two passages? With any other SF author\nthan Gene Wolfe, I would attribute one or other to a momentary\ncarelessness, but I would be quite reluctant to assume that here."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I don't know how much fiction you read that appears in translation;\nprobably not much if you're a confirmed sf junkie, sf being a primarily\nEnglish-language genre, but you should take a look at what _real_\ntranslators can do.  Pick up a copy of _The Futurological Congress_ by\nStanislaw Lem and translated from Polish.  A large section of that novel\nconcerns the development of the language the characters speak (English of\ncourse in the translated book) and how it has been influenced by the\ndevelopments in biochemical technology.  This section is full of very\nclever neologisms and puns that only work in English and could not have\nappeared in the Polish; the translator has made an excellent job of coming\nup with ideas along the same lines as Lem but which work in English.  There\nare other dazzling examples of the translator's art in _The Cyberiad_ and\n_The Star Diaries_.\n\nIf you're interested in the problems of translating difficult\nlanguage-sepcific passages, you might like to consider the problems facing\nDavid Boulos, who is most famous for translating Georges Perec's monumental\nnovel 'Life: A User's Manual' ('La Vie: Mode D'Emploi') and is now in the\nmiddle of translating another of Perec's novels, the one which I cannot\nrecall the title of, but which was written entirely without the letter 'E'\n(a kind of French parallel to 'Gadsby').\n\nIn the afterward to TSOTT, Wolfe explains that he is 'translating' TBOTNS\nfrom some original far-future language and that he has taken liberties by\nreplacing native words with ones he has derived from pseudo-Classical roots\nto give a better flavour.  Under these circumstances, the passages you\nquote seem entirely reasonable.  These problems always occur in novels that\npurport to be 'translations' of texts originally in a language that does\nnot exist.\n\nGareth Rees\ngdr11 at phx.cam.ac.uk"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}