To me, Kandel is one of the Giants. Hats off!
I could not agree more. I read Kandel's translation of Cyberiad over fourty years ago, soon after his Star Diaries translation, and could not imagine how he could have created a work so full of puns in English without altering the original, since puns are in fact completely untranslatable. Assuming he maintained the spirit, if not the (impossible for puns) literal meanings from the original polish, whatever Kandel had done was clearly an act of genius, very apparent even to one like myself who knew nothing of the Polish language.
Does anyone who knows both Polish and English have an example that illustrates how Kandel dealt with puns?
I am also curious about the very first story in Cyberiad of Trurl's machine that makes everything starting with n. Presumable the Polish word for nothing also starts with n?
Anyway, from the time of that first reading of Cyberiad, I have read everything I could find of Lem's, clearly one of the greatest minds, both as philosopher and artist of his time, if not all times.
