How Translation Works, Book Title Edition
As any translator will tell you, translating a piece of fiction isn’t about simply transcribing words one-to-one from one language to another. It’s about capturing a vibe - making sure the tone and intent of the piece come through in words when a mere transliteration would fail. Common phrases in one language don’t exist in another; cultural references in one country mean nothing elsewhere, and so on. This is why a computerized translation is fine for a bland business email but will utterly fail for a novel.
The title of the Hungarian version of When the Moon Hits Your Eye is an example of this “translation, not transliteration” phenomenon. People in English-speaking countries know the title is a lyric from “That’s Amore,” a well-known standard most famously sung by Dean Martin. The title hits in a very specific way, because English-speaking folks have the context for the phrase and the song it’s embedded into. But it’s not a guarantee that the phrase hits the same way in other languages, or will have the same sense of play.
The solution Agave, my Hungarian publisher, and its translators, decided on: Change the title to Csak
a hold az égen, which are lyrics in the 1995 song “Szállj el, kismadár,” which is the biggest hit from the biggest album of Republic, a well-known Hungarian band:
Click to view“Csak
a hold az égen” translates to “Only the moon in the sky,” and it’s the first line of the chorus of the song - which is to say, the line everyone who is a fan of the band or the song will reflexively be able to sing. The song was a top ten hit in Hungary, and the album it was on was number one on the Hungarian charts for ten weeks.
Have I ever heard of “Csak
a hold az égen,” or the band Republic? Until literally this morning, no! But the potential readers of this book in Hungary will almost certainly have heard of it, and it’s a good bet that it will invoke the same sort of vibe and feel in them that “When the moon hits your eye” has in English. And that is the point.
This is also why a human brain is important to attach to translation. A computerized translator can transliterate the phrase “when the moon hits your eye” into Hungarian (“Amikor a hold eléri a szemed,” or so Google says), but that title won’t hit the same way the localized title would. The computer isn’t a human. It doesn’t know.
This is one reason among many why my contracts for non-English language versions of my books now come with a clause that specifies the text has to be translated by actual humans. A computer translation, at its best, will just get you words. A human translator, at their best, will give you the feel. And the feel is actually important. The feel is what makes fiction work.
- JS
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