Subject: Re: Language and the New Sun

From: G.D. Rees <gdr11 at phx.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 17:08:37 +0000

cet1 at cus.cam.ac.uk (C.E. Thompson) writes:
> 1. In TSOTT, in Thecla's story, as retold by Severian to Agia in the
>    Botanic Gardens, Father Inire is made to say to Domnina: "Yet even
>    though light is so weightless we have given its name to that
>    condition...". This pun only makes sense in English or *very* closely
>    related languages, as far as I can trace the derivation of the words
>    light (opposite of heavy) vs. light (opposite of dark).
> 
> 2. In TCOTC, Thea says to Severian: "The dawn-men ... renamed it [Mars]
>    Present. That was a jest in their tongue for the same word meant both
>    _Now_ and _The Gift_. Or so one of my tutors once explained the matter
>    to my sister and me, though I do not see how any language could endure
>    such a confusion."
> 
> So how is one to reconcile the two passages? With any other SF author
> than Gene Wolfe, I would attribute one or other to a momentary
> carelessness, but I would be quite reluctant to assume that here.

I don't know how much fiction you read that appears in translation;
probably not much if you're a confirmed sf junkie, sf being a primarily
English-language genre, but you should take a look at what _real_
translators can do.  Pick up a copy of _The Futurological Congress_ by
Stanislaw Lem and translated from Polish.  A large section of that novel
concerns the development of the language the characters speak (English of
course in the translated book) and how it has been influenced by the
developments in biochemical technology.  This section is full of very
clever neologisms and puns that only work in English and could not have
appeared in the Polish; the translator has made an excellent job of coming
up with ideas along the same lines as Lem but which work in English.  There
are other dazzling examples of the translator's art in _The Cyberiad_ and
_The Star Diaries_.

If you're interested in the problems of translating difficult
language-sepcific passages, you might like to consider the problems facing
David Boulos, who is most famous for translating Georges Perec's monumental
novel 'Life: A User's Manual' ('La Vie: Mode D'Emploi') and is now in the
middle of translating another of Perec's novels, the one which I cannot
recall the title of, but which was written entirely without the letter 'E'
(a kind of French parallel to 'Gadsby').

In the afterward to TSOTT, Wolfe explains that he is 'translating' TBOTNS
from some original far-future language and that he has taken liberties by
replacing native words with ones he has derived from pseudo-Classical roots
to give a better flavour.  Under these circumstances, the passages you
quote seem entirely reasonable.  These problems always occur in novels that
purport to be 'translations' of texts originally in a language that does
not exist.

Gareth Rees
gdr11 at phx.cam.ac.uk