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Forum in English / Lem's neologisms and wordplays
« dnia: Maja 28, 2006, 04:04:15 pm »
Hello all, I'm interested in finding out about Lem's neologisms and wordplays in Polish and their comparison to the English and German translations.
As Mr. Lem himself said in an interview 20 years ago (http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/lem40interview.htm): "The translations of my works always depended on the inventiveness of my translators; and my best two are, I think, the late I. Zimmermann-Gollheim (German) and M. Kandel (English). Ms Zimmermann-Gollheim succeeded in translating remarkably literally, whereas Mr Kandel has given himself a lot of interpretative latitude, replacing that which he was unwilling or unable to retain with that which was equivalent in English on some higher semantic plane."
At the moment I'm working my way through three later Trurl and Klapaucius stories: "Kobyszcze" (In Hot Pursuit of Happiness / Experimenta Felicitologica, 1971), "Edukacja Cyfrania" (Ziffranio's Erziehung, 1976) and "Powtórka" ("Die Wiederholung", 1979). The first one was translated to English by Michael Kandel and to German probably by Irmtraut Zimmermann-Göllheim (?) The other two have not been translated to English as far as I know, but German translations have been made by Hubert Schumann (how does he compare?)
There don't seem to be many neologisms or wordplays in the German translations. I don't have a copy of Kandel's English translation of "Kobyszcze" to compare. Maybe there aren't many in the Polish originals either? In Cyberiad there were plenty though.
As there don't seem to be very many neologisms in these stories, I'd be very grateful if someone who can read Polish could post a list of neologisms and wordplays found in (any of) these stories along with a short explanation of their meaning. Of course a joke is lost by explaining it, but I'm asking from a translator's point of view.
I wish I'd studied Polish when I was young and had time for such things :-/
Any opinions/reviews about these three stories, by the way? These are all long stories that circle around the same topic - it seems like they would make a nice collection.
As Mr. Lem himself said in an interview 20 years ago (http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/lem40interview.htm): "The translations of my works always depended on the inventiveness of my translators; and my best two are, I think, the late I. Zimmermann-Gollheim (German) and M. Kandel (English). Ms Zimmermann-Gollheim succeeded in translating remarkably literally, whereas Mr Kandel has given himself a lot of interpretative latitude, replacing that which he was unwilling or unable to retain with that which was equivalent in English on some higher semantic plane."
At the moment I'm working my way through three later Trurl and Klapaucius stories: "Kobyszcze" (In Hot Pursuit of Happiness / Experimenta Felicitologica, 1971), "Edukacja Cyfrania" (Ziffranio's Erziehung, 1976) and "Powtórka" ("Die Wiederholung", 1979). The first one was translated to English by Michael Kandel and to German probably by Irmtraut Zimmermann-Göllheim (?) The other two have not been translated to English as far as I know, but German translations have been made by Hubert Schumann (how does he compare?)
There don't seem to be many neologisms or wordplays in the German translations. I don't have a copy of Kandel's English translation of "Kobyszcze" to compare. Maybe there aren't many in the Polish originals either? In Cyberiad there were plenty though.
As there don't seem to be very many neologisms in these stories, I'd be very grateful if someone who can read Polish could post a list of neologisms and wordplays found in (any of) these stories along with a short explanation of their meaning. Of course a joke is lost by explaining it, but I'm asking from a translator's point of view.
I wish I'd studied Polish when I was young and had time for such things :-/
Any opinions/reviews about these three stories, by the way? These are all long stories that circle around the same topic - it seems like they would make a nice collection.