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Originally Posted by !@#$%!

here's my first salvo: without translation, most of the world would be reduced to intellectual provincialism. would you have ever read homer, or the bible, or plato & aristotle, or the tao te ching an i ching and the yoga sutra or the kama sutra or the epic of gilgamesh? and that's just antiquity, and it's just for starters...

I'm certainly not averse to reading works in translation in general; my point, which seems to have been lost here, is that while they can be 'enlightening' in a fashion, they are misrepresentative of the original intention of the author. While I may enjoy Guerney's talents of composition, they are entirely independent of the novel's 'value' in its original, unadulterated form.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

for the most part it's true; however, just like a movie can on occasion be better than the original book, there are times when a translation can surpass the original. i'll ofer an example in a moment.

See above. I maintain that the translation and the original work exist, while perhaps in tandem and with their own respective merits, separately from one another.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

in that case a translation should be an invitation to learn a language. i set off to learn english in earnest when i started reading ulysses in spanish and i found i didn't like it-- i knew the verbal potency was lost, i bid my time, and when i finally arrived to the source i didn't dip-- i splashed and dove and drank until i was sated.

My point exactly.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

yes but your choice of authors is limiting.

They're examples, geek-boy. If you want to list every author in existence from 1000 B.C. on, have yourself a party.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

why then not just limit yourself to read midwestern contemporary authors?

Again, you're missing the point. I do not summarily shun works in translation; I do, however, acknowledge that my 'interpretation,' whatever its worth, will be flawed, and traitorous to the original intent.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ok here is my translation story.

i'm waiting for someone & decide to go into a bookstore. browsing though the books in spanish, i find this thing called "por el amor de pedro infante". sonorous, musical, campy little title ("for the love of pedro infante"-- he was a mexican movie star of the... 50s?)

so i start reading: it's the most colorful, hilarious, horny, insane book i'v seen in ages. i keep readinng, enthralled. but it's time to go! so i ask the bookstore guy about it; the woman who wrote it gave a reading there, signed books, etc. and then he tells me-- it's a translation! i look, and sure, there's a whole TEAM of people who went into writing it. so of course, fool that i am , i buy the original-- which was selling for $5 while the spanish version was $15 (i had to go the dentist so money was short).
when i get home, i open the book, and what do i find? a dissapointment. a chick book. a bland, boring narrative of a single woman in a border town. gone was the lush color of mexican slang, the outrageous expressions, the verbal fireworks. the book was called "loving pedro infante" -- you gringos see any music in that? no... i realized then that the translators were much better writers than the author and had surpassed the original version by light years by injecting it with verve and virtuosity and sheer street poetry.

do i want to limit myself to the particular province of my particular time and place? do i want to limit my culture to my place in the calendar, to my genes, to the politics of identity, to my insufficiency in other languages? no! no! no! i am too much of a glutton for that.

translation however should be in the hands of poets and poets only, because only they can recreate the peculiar magic of a language, for a different time and place, or create a new sort of magic.

and on that note, i will never speak or read russian, but i can say guerney is a bona-fide provider of linguistic delights, even though he wrote his translation in 1942 and this is 2006, and, oh, can you say "horse's twat" these days? ha ha hah... i found that in a chapter yesterday. i wouldn't waste my time in any of the rat's ass translations i've seen elsewhere though.

To reiterate my point, while I can appreciate the capabilities of a good translator, I won't read a translated novel with the same PURPOSE in mind. To restrict my example to the current issue at hand, Gogol, I feel it fruitless and, to a point, detrimental, to deconstruct the technicalities of his writing, because it is not Gogol's writing I am deconstructing. This does not preclude my enjoyment of his translated works on other, more superficial levels, but it does mean that I am ingesting a literary regurgitation, which, in the best of circumstances, is a diluted and presumptuous caricature of the essence of novel.