they're baaaack!
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2008/12/refreshed_classics_abomination.html
(a blog post about No Fear Shakespeare, the new PL translation, and the new Canterbury Tales translation)
I am finding it very difficult to think or talk about these things in a way that doesn't come off as snotty, or as one of those horrible "purists" one is always hearing about--and always pejoratively, as though wanting something to be faithful to the source text is something that only pathetic, humorless Austen snobs do, while normal people know how to just relax and have a good time. (Yes, okay, the reviews that basically boil down to "It's got bonnets and dancing, what else do you people want?!?" every time a new Austen movie comes out, hit a nerve.)
Part of this is doubtless because I keep defaulting to talking exclusively about the "translations" of Shakespeare, which are exclusively study guides (sucky ones--see, there I go again) and not literary projects, so it's probably unfair to group them together. But I'm going to do it again in just a second--just so you know. (Though I do confess myself confused, before we get there, about just how a prose translation of PL is actually going to *help* with some of the things that make Milton difficult, like the density of his allusions. Even if you untangle his sentence structure, how is the translation going to provide background for a reader who doesn't have it? Aren't we back to footnotes then?)
I keep hearing this refrain about "the modern reader" who needs help with this difficult language, or the less neutral version that "lots of students these days can barely read and write simple modern English, so they need help with this stuff," and I can't help thinking, And we're all okay with this? We've collectively decided--by having to talk about these Shakespeare translations as though they are acceptable for people to use, or risk being labeled as "elitists"--that the answer to this problem is to dumb down the Shakespeare, not to improve the level at which people read? And then it raises the question of *why* we read, too--because if you are providing a translation of Shakespeare, it's a bit like saying that the language itself is beside the point, something to be glossed over on the way to the content. (Actually, this is even more the case with the prose translation of Paradise Lost. Milton did it like that for a *reason*, you guys! If it's hard, it's okay! And why aren't things allowed to be hard anymore, anyway? Aaaand now I feel old.) Why do we let ourselves get so freaked out by the possibility of difficult or (gasp!) even figurative language? (I have some other thoughts on this question, and an article I just read about Much Ado, but they aren't yet in any other form than snarky comments I wrote in the margins.)
Which is to say that the whole discussion is making me feel rather confused. On the one hand, I don't want to discount the difficulty that some people--many people--do have with Shakespeare (which is what, apparently, I am doing by saying translations are bad). On the other hand, I really don't believe that Shakespeare is as difficult as people think it is, even if you are only reading it and not seeing it on stage or film. (Seeing it certainly helps, but if we really believed that was the only way Shakespeare could make sense to beginners, we'd stop teaching it in schools.) That's a fundamental belief of mine, which is part of why the translations bother me so much; as if we need yet another thing to convince people that Shakespeare is too difficult for them to read.
The real problem, of course, is that I don't know what to *do* about any of this.
(a blog post about No Fear Shakespeare, the new PL translation, and the new Canterbury Tales translation)
I am finding it very difficult to think or talk about these things in a way that doesn't come off as snotty, or as one of those horrible "purists" one is always hearing about--and always pejoratively, as though wanting something to be faithful to the source text is something that only pathetic, humorless Austen snobs do, while normal people know how to just relax and have a good time. (Yes, okay, the reviews that basically boil down to "It's got bonnets and dancing, what else do you people want?!?" every time a new Austen movie comes out, hit a nerve.)
Part of this is doubtless because I keep defaulting to talking exclusively about the "translations" of Shakespeare, which are exclusively study guides (sucky ones--see, there I go again) and not literary projects, so it's probably unfair to group them together. But I'm going to do it again in just a second--just so you know. (Though I do confess myself confused, before we get there, about just how a prose translation of PL is actually going to *help* with some of the things that make Milton difficult, like the density of his allusions. Even if you untangle his sentence structure, how is the translation going to provide background for a reader who doesn't have it? Aren't we back to footnotes then?)
I keep hearing this refrain about "the modern reader" who needs help with this difficult language, or the less neutral version that "lots of students these days can barely read and write simple modern English, so they need help with this stuff," and I can't help thinking, And we're all okay with this? We've collectively decided--by having to talk about these Shakespeare translations as though they are acceptable for people to use, or risk being labeled as "elitists"--that the answer to this problem is to dumb down the Shakespeare, not to improve the level at which people read? And then it raises the question of *why* we read, too--because if you are providing a translation of Shakespeare, it's a bit like saying that the language itself is beside the point, something to be glossed over on the way to the content. (Actually, this is even more the case with the prose translation of Paradise Lost. Milton did it like that for a *reason*, you guys! If it's hard, it's okay! And why aren't things allowed to be hard anymore, anyway? Aaaand now I feel old.) Why do we let ourselves get so freaked out by the possibility of difficult or (gasp!) even figurative language? (I have some other thoughts on this question, and an article I just read about Much Ado, but they aren't yet in any other form than snarky comments I wrote in the margins.)
Which is to say that the whole discussion is making me feel rather confused. On the one hand, I don't want to discount the difficulty that some people--many people--do have with Shakespeare (which is what, apparently, I am doing by saying translations are bad). On the other hand, I really don't believe that Shakespeare is as difficult as people think it is, even if you are only reading it and not seeing it on stage or film. (Seeing it certainly helps, but if we really believed that was the only way Shakespeare could make sense to beginners, we'd stop teaching it in schools.) That's a fundamental belief of mine, which is part of why the translations bother me so much; as if we need yet another thing to convince people that Shakespeare is too difficult for them to read.
The real problem, of course, is that I don't know what to *do* about any of this.