Lost Without Translation - Bruce Wannell, Michael Kumpfmuller, Laurence Boissier and Nalin Ranasinghe
Bruce Wannell (translator)
Bruce Wannell (translator)
- A panel on the felicities and infelicities, perils and dangers of translation.
- Translation: an attempt to build bridges, an attempt to make people understand each other.
- Beware of false cousins; don't look for perfect overlap between words.
- Had a story translated from French into German and Italian. German translator never asked any questions, Italian translator wanted to know what was happening between the lines of what she'd written and used language of collective unconscious.
- LB wanted to use translation to make her work better. Has been translating her own work into English (using google translate and synonym.com) then back into French and the texts become better, with other dimensions.
- Take Homer's Odyssey. To understand the Greek philosophers you must understand their mythology. "You can't take philosophy out of its native element" (including story).
- Helped to understand, post September 11, what was war like - in USA, and also the civil war in Sri Lanka.
- "Whether we like it or not, we live in a world filled with strange gods" (Ares --> Rumsfeld?) and lurking irrational forces
- Students at the University of Jaffna (north; Tamil) - "they knew the Odyssey, they had lived through the Odyssey".
Michael Kumpfmuller (been translated)
- "We need translators because we are sinners" (we once had a common language then we prayed to the wrong gods - Babel)
- Often you cannot read a single word or character of the language into which you are translated
- MK wrote book about Kafka; discovered that Kafka deeply meaningful in many far flung countries e.g. China and Vietnam
Question (asked by me!): what are the human qualities, as opposed to the technical and contextual knowledge, that make a good translator?
Compendium of answers from the four panelists: creativity, what makes people laugh, 'pub knowledge', humility, passion and love of the culture you're dealing with, sense of commonality of humanity, courage ("you must not fear intimacy")
Austenistan: Jane Austen 200 Years On
First a two person reading by English actors Adrian Lukis (Wickham in the 1995 - or 'Colin Firth' - Pride and Prejudice, though that means nothing to me) and Caroline Languishe about the life and books of Jane Austen, including dramatisations of a few passages from those novels.
Then a panel discussion involving Laaleen Sukhera and Gayathri Warnasuriya - both members of the Jane Austen society of Pakistan and contributors to the recent anthology Austenistan, comprising short stories inspired by Austen and set in contemporary Pakistan. Sukhera also convener of said society and editor of the anthology.
- Many parallels between Regency England and South Asian society today, including due to postcolonial legacy - misogyny, hypocrisy, femininity and domesticity.
- Growing up, could relate more to Austen characters than US teen book characters: restrictions placed on interactions with opposite sex, excitement about going to a ball, the marriage market (Pakistan still has a social season: are you invited to the right places, are you the right pedigree, ladies' maids attending the balls with them).
- Society not a book club per se - they met (meet) to discuss some associated topics, and a couple of times a year do cosplay with dancing and tea parties (some of the clothes and fabrics from Regency England are still worn in contemporary Pakistan).
Also - picking up my festival game I was interviewed afterwards for a British Council arts podcast. We'll see whether I make the cut!
