In the Independent on Sunday Christopher Folwer [sic ?] continues their admirable long-running series on overlooked literature with installment nr. 242 -- considering (some of) what still remains Untranslated (into English).
I am, of course, always thrilled when folks point to the enormous amount of great and interesting literature that has not yet been translated into English; recall PEN's wonderful PEN recommends-page (which they seem to have ditched recently, sigh ...) or Scott Esposito's Translate this Book ! selection at the Quarterly Conversation (and note that some titles from both these lists now are available in English, which is wonderful). However, I'd be more impressed if, for example, Folwer didn't spend a paragraph explaining:
And, yes, the Bordewijk may be a Dutch keystone -- but it's a widely-circulated-in-English one, and given how much else really isn't available in English (just from the Dutch: a pile of Gerard Reve, for one; J.J. Voskuil's epic Het Bureau for another; pretty much anything by local favorite A.F.Th. van der Heijden for a lot more ...), well ... not the greatest example.
Well, at least Folwer has some other nice catches, right ? I mean:
Oh ... wait. Right there: Eyre & Spottiswoode published J.R. Carey's translation in 1946, as Spain: an interpretation. With an introduction by R.M.Nadal.
So, yeah, worst researched (and fact-checked) 'literary' article of the week -- as the only two supposedly untranslated titles he explicitly mentions turn out to have been translated. I hope they get their money back, because that is some beyond-belief shoddy work. (And people complain about 'book-bloggers' .....) And a real disservice and wasted opportunity, because there's so much that really hasn't been made available in English yet.
(I was going to note that, while Folwer accurately notes that: "The mass of Holocaust literature, novels in Yiddish, Norwegian, German, Baltic, and Eastern European languages remains untranslated", that this is perhaps not the greatest untranslated issue/oversight to be concerned about -- valuable though it no doubt is, there seems to be a reasonable amount of Holocaust literature available in English -- and maybe a peek beyond the merely European (everything Folwer talks about is European ...) is warranted. But, as the above examples show, this article is is no way to be taken seriously, so why bother arguing points like that ..... They should just pull it and kill it and put us out of our misery. And maybe try commissioning authors who have a vague idea of what they're writing about.)
I am, of course, always thrilled when folks point to the enormous amount of great and interesting literature that has not yet been translated into English; recall PEN's wonderful PEN recommends-page (which they seem to have ditched recently, sigh ...) or Scott Esposito's Translate this Book ! selection at the Quarterly Conversation (and note that some titles from both these lists now are available in English, which is wonderful). However, I'd be more impressed if, for example, Folwer didn't spend a paragraph explaining:
A friend from the Netherlands once told me: "If you want to understand who we are as a nation, you must read Character, written in 1938 by Ferdinand Bordewijk." The Dutch classic concerns a bailiff who tyrannically rules over the slums of Rotterdam, and the ambitious son who becomes a lawyer in order to destroy him. A keystone of 20th-century literature in its own country, it's impossible to find in an English translation. A film version won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1998, but the book is still unavailable.I understand that folks may currently be boycotting Amazon.com and hence don't do a simple book search there, but come on, you don't need a fact-checker to know (or at least figure out) that Peter Owen published E.M.Prince's translation of this in 1966, and that Ivan R. Dee reprinted it in 1999; my copy ($7.50 at Strand, purchased August, 2007), pulled from my bookshelf and beside my laptop on my desk as I write this, belies the fact that: "it's impossible to find in an English translation"; see the Ivan R. Dee publicity page, or get your own copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
And, yes, the Bordewijk may be a Dutch keystone -- but it's a widely-circulated-in-English one, and given how much else really isn't available in English (just from the Dutch: a pile of Gerard Reve, for one; J.J. Voskuil's epic Het Bureau for another; pretty much anything by local favorite A.F.Th. van der Heijden for a lot more ...), well ... not the greatest example.
Well, at least Folwer has some other nice catches, right ? I mean:
By contrast, Angel Ganivet's masterpiece about the Latin temperament, Idearium Español, remains untranslated.Yes ! Where is the translation of that Ángel Ganivet masterpiece ?!??
Oh ... wait. Right there: Eyre & Spottiswoode published J.R. Carey's translation in 1946, as Spain: an interpretation. With an introduction by R.M.Nadal.
So, yeah, worst researched (and fact-checked) 'literary' article of the week -- as the only two supposedly untranslated titles he explicitly mentions turn out to have been translated. I hope they get their money back, because that is some beyond-belief shoddy work. (And people complain about 'book-bloggers' .....) And a real disservice and wasted opportunity, because there's so much that really hasn't been made available in English yet.
(I was going to note that, while Folwer accurately notes that: "The mass of Holocaust literature, novels in Yiddish, Norwegian, German, Baltic, and Eastern European languages remains untranslated", that this is perhaps not the greatest untranslated issue/oversight to be concerned about -- valuable though it no doubt is, there seems to be a reasonable amount of Holocaust literature available in English -- and maybe a peek beyond the merely European (everything Folwer talks about is European ...) is warranted. But, as the above examples show, this article is is no way to be taken seriously, so why bother arguing points like that ..... They should just pull it and kill it and put us out of our misery. And maybe try commissioning authors who have a vague idea of what they're writing about.)