Can anyone comment on the translations of Krasznahorkai's works into English?
Every time I read a translation of highly regarded literature I can't help but wonder if I'm getting some inadequate rendition that is missing something critical to why the originals are so highly regarded. This isn't meant to be a criticism of translators, just that I think their job is very difficult.
Of course, I still happily read and enjoy translations; there's just this shadow cast for me all the time by the originals.
His works were in Hungarian. If we are being honest, he probably won the Nobel for his translated works as much as his originals. Or, how many Nobel committee members are fluent in Hungarian?
Or something like this, just trying to express that I've never really thought about it like that. That we don't really interact with original works when we read/listen to translated works and thus we can't really say anything about the originals.
I'm biased because I lived down the street from a bookstore connected to a translation publishing house, but I can't recommend translated fiction enough for opening one's eyes to the weird relationship between a person, their language, and the works they read.
There is a bookstore in Vancouver with a section of translations which is reliably fruitful when I visit. The last book I bought there was a translation of Yuri Herrera's Season of the Swamp. I devoured it, even though I agree that I wish it were more fleshed out. It made me think about reading some of his work in Spanish even though it would be a long process for me. I enjoyed the effort in spanish literature class, maybe I can do it again.
On the topic of the OP, I struggled with Satantango on more than one occasion over the last 12 years. For whatever reason I couldn't get through it, but I've carried the book around through several moves. Maybe I'll try again.
I commented elsewhere: Satantango is easily my least favorite LK so far. If you want to try something else, I would recommend The Melancholy of Resistance as a novel with similar concerns but better execution, War & War as a metafictional odyssey, or the short stories.
The Hungarian poet George Szirtes, with no prior translation experience, translated his first two novels, over a period of many years. I can’t speak Hungarian, but both the Melancholy of Resistance and Satantango remain my favourite novels of his, and I think I can partially attribute that to Szirtes‘s translations.
Something is always lost in a translation, but I always advise everyone to read the reviews of available translations of any foreign book they are planning to read. The quality of translations varies wildly.
One of the biggest things is that there are lots of old public domain translations of popular works, but the translations are very outdated. They rank higher in Amazon because either they are cheaper, or their publishers use their power to rank them higher because they are making a bigger profit. The new translations of Les Misérables are superior, but the one that is pushed highest is the 100 year old translation that is the "official" version that the (excellent) popular musical have put their stamp of approval (and poster) onto.
In the early 1900s a bunch of the big Russian works were translated to english. If you read about career translators competing to get the "best" ones you really get disenchanted with translated works.
As pieces on their own they are great, but how close are they to the original? Like some translations are garbage others are amazing so how much of the original spirit is intact.
Every time I read a translation of highly regarded literature I can't help but wonder if I'm getting some inadequate rendition that is missing something critical to why the originals are so highly regarded. This isn't meant to be a criticism of translators, just that I think their job is very difficult.
Of course, I still happily read and enjoy translations; there's just this shadow cast for me all the time by the originals.