Ann Goldstein on Translating Elena Ferrante.

I’ve read two of Ferrante’s earlier novels, also translated by Ann Goldstein, and while impressed by the novels as stories I found my dislike of Goldstein’s translationese rising to the point that I’ve not been tempted to start the Neapolitan novels. The translationese isn’t constantly intrusive, but every two or three pages it niggles. A paragraph as an example at random (i.e. found after a 2-minute skim) from The Days of Abandonment:

“That’s enough!” I often shouted, at home, on the street. “I said that’s enough!” I made a gesture of wanting to slap them, I lifted my arm, I seriously felt like it and restrained myself with an effort.

No English-language fiction writer would write this, unless s/he was intentionally creating a narrator’s voice of nervy clumsiness. That might be justifiable in this novel’s context – but as I understand it Ferrante’s Italian is journeyman standard, literary but without “literary” effects, and not noticeably clumsy. Perhaps Goldstein’s style had improved once she got to the Neapolitan novels? I don’t understand her celebrity translator status except as a phenomenon of transference due to the publicity around Ferrante’s hidden identity.

That’s the same way I know Russian.

And about the same way I know English, ironically – I hardly ever have the opportunity to talk with someone else in English outside online forums, and I have never actually visited an English-speaking country. (Israel doesn’t count – it’s not much more of an English-speaking country than it is a Russian-speaking country.)

I did have a bit of academic training in English early on, but as far back as I can remember, I went on ahead with reading the textbook, and didn’t have any problems with understanding it (even the sections well in advance of where I was supposed to read).

Perhaps I should seek it out. I ran across the paperback several times, many years ago, but it didn’t tweak my curiousity.

The Skin
I read that over thwenty years ago. The only two things I remember is the dance scene with the Italian ambassador (?) in Berlin – won’t spoil the twist for you – and a general feeling that Malaparte is very much in love with himself. And yes, a lot of bleakness, although I seem to have successfully suppressed any specific memories.

Can’t speak to Burns, but I would absolutely second Lewis’ Naples ’44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy.

I am still puzzled by the success that Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels have had not just in Italy, but outside of it as well.

My own take is that every year there has to be a publishing event. David Foster Wallace one year, Donna Tartt another, Patrick O’Brien another. Part of it is manufactured, part just a happy, or unhappy, coincidence.

Hardcore novel addicts are few, fewer than those who read a small handful of books a year. These book (or so) a year readers (and their Christmas list), is the target audience, the ones looking for a respectable band wagon. Once the band wagon gets rolling, well, that’s all she wrote. Wait again for next year.

Or something like that.

Well, yes, you have to have quality of some sort, just as you have to have some truth in advertising.

More Sayers, from Gaudy Night (1935):

The room in which [the literary cocktail party] was held was exceedingly hot and crowded, and all the assembled authors were discussing (a) publishers, (b) agents, (c) their own sales, (d) other people’s sales, and (e) the extraordinary behavior of the Book of the Moment selectors in awarding their ephemeral crown to Tasker Hepplewater’s Mock Turtle ‘I finished this book,’ one distinguished adjudicator had said, ‘with tears running down my face.’ The author of Serpent’s Fang confided to Harriet over a petite saucisse and a glass of sherry that they must have been tears of pure boredom; but the author of Dust and Shiver said, No — they were probably tears of merriment, called forth by the unintentional humour of the book; had she ever met Hepplewater? A very angry young woman, whose book had been passed over, declared that the whole thing was a notorious farce. The Book of the Moment was selected from each publisher’s list in turn, so that her own Ariadne Adams was automatically excluded from benefit, owing to the mere fact that her publisher’s imprint had been honored in the previous January. She had, however, received private assurance that the critic of the Morning Star had sobbed like a child over the last hundred pages of Ariadne, and would probably make it his Book of the Fortnight, if only the publisher could be persuaded to take advertising space in the paper. The author of The Squeezed Lemon agreed that advertising was at the bottom of ited Lemon agreed that advertising was at the bottom of it: had they heard how the Daily Flashlight had tried to blackmail Henry Quint into advertising with them? And how, on his refusal, they had said darkly, ‘Well, you know what will happen, Mr. Quint?’ And how no single Quint book had received so much as a review from the Flashlight ever since? And how Quint had advertised that fact in the Morning Star and sent up his net sales 50 per cent in consequence? Well, by some fantastic figure anyhow. But the author of Primrose Dalliance said that with the Book of the Moment crowd, what counted was Personal Pull — surely they remembered that Hepplewater had married Walton Strawberry’s latest wife’s sister. The author of Jocund Day agreed about the Pull, but thought that in this instance it was political, because there was some powerful anti-Fascist propaganda in Mock Turtle and it was well known that you could always get old Sneep Fortescue with a good smack at the Blackshirts.

“But what’s Mock Turtle about?” inquired Harriet.

On this point the authors were for the most part vague; but a young man who wrote humorous magazine stories, and could therefore afford to be wide-minded about novels, said he had read it and thought it rather interesting, only a bit long. It was about a swimming instructor at a watering-place, who had contracted such an unfortunate anti-nudity complex through watching so many bathing-beauties that it completely inhibited all his natural emotions. So he got a job on a whaler and fell in love at first sight with an Eskimo, because she was such a beautiful bundle of garments. So he married her and brought her back to live in a suburb, where she fell in love with a vegetarian nudist. So then the husband went slightly mad and contracted a complex about giant turtles, and spent all his spare time staring into the turtle-tank at the Aquarium, and watching the strange, slow monsters swimming significantly round in their encasing shells. But of course a lot of things came into it — it was one of those books that reflect the author’s reactions to Things in General. Altogether, significant was, he thought, the word to describe it.

Harriet began to feel that there might be something to be said even for the plot of [her currently-being-writtten mystery]. It was, at least, significant of nothing in particular.

Part of it is manufactured, part just a happy, or unhappy, coincidence.

I think of it as randomness rather than coincidence. There’s simply no correlation, positive or negative, between publicity and quality. If there was a negative correlation that at least would be helpful.

No, I mean the randomness is in the interface between publicity/modish noise and substantive quality. This Month’s Hot Literary Sensation might be fourth-rate or first-rate – the only way to find out is, having sought reviews and recommendations from sources that one hopes aren’t overly influenced by the publicity/modish noise, to actually read the damn thing. And given other demands, one might never get round to doing so, which is mildly frustrating.

I have had a general policy to ignore ‘best sellers’ and pick them up years later when they catch my eye. It’s part of ignoring advertising.

As a professional translator and fluent speaker of Italian, I have to disagree with the glowing praise for Ann Goldstein’s English translations of Elena Ferrante. I find them sloppy, lazy, and slavishly literal–like machine translation with paltry post-editing. In my work, I strive to make my English translations sound as if they were written in native English. I believe most professional translators do the same. I wish she didn’t have a monopoly on English translations of Ferrante’s spectacular work. As I read the original Italian and Goldstein’s translations side by side, I find myself constantly editing the English in my mind. It’s a testament to the brilliance of the originals that they are still loved by those who read them in the stilted English of Goldstein.

Thank you, Languagehat. That is correct. I am referring to the reviews of her translations that are generally available and also printed in the English versions of the books. After steaming for months about this, I am so glad to have found this forum and the opportunity to speak my mind.

I worked for 21 years at the Organization of American States in Washington. We were held to a high professional standard, but there was also great pressure to churn out our work and not edit so much. This was a constant thorn in my side. So witnessing the adulation given to sloppy translation pushes my buttons!

Yes, languagehat. Unless the reviewers are translators themselves, or at least fluent in both languages, they are not qualified, in my opinion, to rate the translations. I suspect that those who chose Ann Goldstein suffer from the same deficiency. She was probably able to churn out the translations at a speed that a careful professional could not match. Fellow professional translators, you certainly know what I mean! In a professional translation environment, a prospective hire must be thoroughly vetted by a seasoned translator; that was part of my job.