catcher: german translation
Bernd Wahlbrinck (Bernd.Wahlbrinck@t-online.de)
Sat, 29 May 1999 20:06:24 +0100
FROM: Bernd Wahlbrinck 29.05.1999 19:46:07 MET GERMANY
bernd.wahlbrinck@t-online.de
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hi camille
like i said, basically heinrich boell's translation is not very good,
in spite of the fact that boell is, in my opinion, a very good author
(i also admire his personality and what he did here in germany in the
70s/80s both as an author and a political person). mainly, the
translation is poor because quite often he doesnt hit holden's slang
level adequately. this may partly be due to the fact that he
translated it in the fifties, and maybe he had to restrict himself
then - i dont know. as a matter of fact, my students last year tore
the german translation to pieces, but i believe they overdid it a
bit. here are a few examples:
a. "that david copperfield kind of crap" is translated into "david
copperfield zeug", and obviously "zeug" would have been "stuff" and
should have been "scheiss", most likely.
b. there is a weird tendency, also in american films which were
overdubbed, to translate the past tense into german praeteritum,
which is, however, most of the time stupid because in colloquial
language we just dont use it most of the time. thus, in the very
first sentence of the novel, it says "was meine eltern taten...".
actually, nobody says that, certainly not a kid of 17; we would say
sthg like "was meine eltern gemacht haben".
c. here s one very strange aspect: the second word in the novel is
YOU. we had a lively discussion about this word, as to whether it
should be translated by DU, IHR, or SIE!
as for boell, he picked SIE, which i probably wouldnt have done.
anyway, one thing is perfectly clear to me: it would be a hell of a
job to try and translate this novel; if you can think about a little
word like "phony" for ages, how long would it take you to translate
the whole book and have a feeling of having done a good job
afterwards? i wouldnt want to do it - i'll have to admit it.
what do you think?
Bernd