Copyright © Judy Szöllôsy, 2007

Design by Köböl Vera

Published in Hungary by Corvina Books Ltd.

ISBN 978 963 13 6976 2

“Bless thee, Bottom! Bless thee! Thou art translated.”

SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, ii.

Contents

Author’s Preface

I. The Translator: A Psychological Profile

II. Translation: An Elementary Paradigm

III. The Elements of Editing Part One: Taking Stock

IV. The Elements of Editing Part Two: Constructing a Plot

V. The Elements of Editing: General Criteria for Evaluating a Text

VI. The Elements of Editing: A Reprise

VII. The Four Aspects of Meaning: Sense, Feeling, Tone, Intention

VIII. The Elements of English Composition: The Paragraph

IX. The Elements of English Composition: The Sentence – A Minimalist’s Portrait

X. The English Sentence in Translation: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

XI. The English Sentence in Translation: A Character Study

XII The Elements of English Punctuation: The Comma

XIII. The Elements of English Punctuation: Semicolons, Dashes, Parentheses

XIV. The Elements of English Grammar: The Most Common Mistakes

XV. Synonymy and Equivalence of Meaning

XVI. Hunglish and Its Many Guises

XVII. Magázás, Tegezés, Tetszikelés: A Chapter of Its Own

XVIII. Names, Place Names, and Other Bothersome Nomers

XIX. Further Thoughts on Names and Naming: The PS Section

XX. Hunglish and Language: False Friends

XXI. Hunglish and Language: Names, Words, Idiomatic Expressions

XXII. Hunglish is As Hunglish Does: You Are What You Think?

XXIII. The Elements of Style: Le mot juste

XXIV. The Elements of Style: The Paragraph and the Sentence Yet Again

XXV. The Elements of Style: Grammar Redux

XXVI. The Elements of Style: Verbosity

XXVII. The Elements of Style: The Fine Points

XXVIII. The Elements of Style: How to Doctor Your Text

XXIX. The Elements of Style: Translating Dialogue

XXX. A Style Sheet for Translators: Formatting, Titles, and Other Inconveniences

XXXI. A Style Sheet for Translators: Footnotes, Bibliographies, Copyright

XXXII. Hunglish and English: Some Afterthoughts

XXXIII. Hunglish into English: A Checklist

Recommended Resources

Author’s Preface

’Tis very Dangerous Tampring with a Muse:
The Profit’s small, and you have much to lose…
ROSCOMMON, Essay on Translated Verse, 11. 284-285.

This basic guide to the elementary principles of translating nonfiction texts from Hungarian into English came into being because after years of teaching, translating, editing and reading translations for my own pleasure, it has occurred to me that many of us engaged in translation, professionally or otherwise, as well as those just learning this fascinating and intricate art, often go about it without understanding how two languages and cultures – in this case Hungarian and English – interact in the process of translation, sometimes helping, at others interfering with each other, being at cross purposes, as it were. Often, we do not ask ourselves an adequate amount of questions about the nature of culture, language, styles of thinking, mental habits, and translation itself – not to mention the meaning of meaning – and so end up groping in the dark, frustrating our readers as well as ourselves. Learning to ask the right questions is half the battle. Finding the answers and putting them into practice is the other half.

Through the years I have seen the work of my students go astray for lack of simple guidelines, and I have seen translated texts lose too much in the process of translation, becoming boring from within, as it were. I have attempted to help where I could, partly in the classroom and party out of it, and it fills me with a sense of pride and accomplishment to think that I may have been of some help, possibly even a source of inspiration, to a number of ex-students, now practicing translators. This book is therefore gratefully dedicated to them, past, present, and future.

Judy Szöllősy
September, 2006 Budapest

I. The Translator: A Psychological Profile

What kind of person makes a good translator? A very complex kind of person, a very contradictory kind of person. The good translator should have a feel for and a close familiarity with at least two languages, that goes without saying. Since translation is intricate and time consuming, the good translator should also enjoy, however perverse this may sound, the tiresome wrangling with minutiae. In the best-case scenario, translation should be his – or her favorite hobby. (Note: In what follows, it is hoped that no offense will be taken if the intrepid race of present and future translators of both sexes will generally, if not always, be referred to as ‘he’ – meaning ‘he’ and ‘she’.) Anyone who aspires to become a translator or would like to become an even better translator, should also have – or should strive to acquire – the following:

→ Patience and perseverance. Sit down by your computer and don’t budge until you’ve given it your all. In English (?!) this is called sitzfleisch. It adds a couple of inches to your waist, but you can always work that off.

→ A critical eye and the killer instinct. Since the art of literacy is fading at an alarming rate, you will have to learn to be unaccommodating with anything in the source text that you do not consider up to par. Either edit it out (unless it is a thought, see Chapters III – VI), or resort to doctoring the text (of which more in Chapter V). You will have to develop a built-in alarm system, a little red light that will go off at the slightest hint of any word or phrase or culture-specific expression that will backfire if included in your translated text. When sentences are too long, are packed with too much information and are difficult to comprehend; when adjectives are tripled, even quadrupled, and the author keeps repeating himself for want of having anything further to say; when you come up against empty expressions that add bulk but little else to the text, your warning system should spring into action. Don’t attempt to transfer fuzzy thinking or poor style into the body of the translated text. What would be the use?

→ A corollary to the above is that a translator also needs a healthy sense of self-preservation. Think of it this way: Translations don’t come with a footnote saying, “If you think this is bad, you should have seen the original!” Certainly, you don’t want the reader thinking that you are to blame for a badly written text.

→ Curiosity and tolerance for engaging in research. Have you ever turned on the evening news in the middle of a news report? No matter how closely you listen, you won’t know what the report is about because you are missing vital information. A similar situation may occur when you are asked to translate a text that you do not fully understand because you are lacking the background knowledge for its full comprehension. So you rely on translating the words instead of the meaning, hoping that the reader will not notice. But the sad news is that the reader will notice if a text does not rely on a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding – in short, if the translation lacks authority. If you don’t know what you are talking about, how can you expect your reader to know? So do some background reading. Use your lexicons. Use the Internet. Call a friend. Remember: A thorough understanding of the background is the glue that holds your translation together, supplying it with essential content and lending it authority. You may also need to supply information where it is missing either because the readers of the source text did not have to be told (for instance, there is no need to supply a reference for Mohács in a Hungarian text), or because the information was left out by oversight (such as the name of a book under review). In either case, do some research and supply the missing information, otherwise you will end up frustrating your reader.

→ Editorial skills. Editorial skills and the killer instinct are closely related, except that editorial skills are wider in scope. We will take a closer look at these skills in Chapters III, IV, and V.

→ A translator should also be a competent decision-maker, because he is going to be confronted with a variety of choices every step of the way. He should enjoy being in a situation where the results of his labors will depend entirely on the choices he makes. The point is this: Translation is about an awareness of the choices open to us. It is also about the perseverance and self-confidence needed to light upon the best of all possible solutions in any particular situation.

→ Artistic inclination. To translate anything other than a laundry list requires that you review, rethink, reshape, and reorder the original text in accordance with the common usage of the host language and the expectations of its readers. When translating a text, think in terms of recreating the original work in its entirety, i.e., you must think big. Remember: Your translation will only be as good as you are.

→ A translator also needs to be an avid reader. He must gain familiarity with the corpus of fiction and nonfiction of the target language. As the translator Klára Szöllősy once commented, “Perfect knowledge of the given language and literature are the prerequisites of talent.” In large measure, translation is imitation, and a thorough knowledge of “how it is said in English” is vital to its success. In some American colleges, students receive two grades on their papers, one for content and one for style, and that includes lab reports!

→ The translator also needs to be a first-rate communicator, a blabbermouth, an inexhaustible fount of words, which is just another way of saying that the translator should enjoy the act of communication. This is of the essence.

→ The translator should also enjoy the status of middleman, an undervalued job, if ever there was one. Yet it calls for him to be a dazzling juggler who works magic with words. Furthermore, since the translator holds the fuse that will light up the new, nascent version of a pre-existing text, he must learn to shoulder responsibility for the new “product”. This, too, is of the essence.

→ It also helps if the translator is ambitious. For one thing, he is running the show; for another, he must strive to do the best he can, regardless of the pay, which has an alarming tendency to shrivel in inverse proportion to the difficulty of the translation.

→ The translator should also practice the art of delayed gratification. Gratification will, most probably, not come in the form of serious money (see above), and it will not come in the form of prizes, awards, and other accolades, though we can’t rule out the possibility. The translator is invisible, though not more so, probably, than a stage or film director, or a choreographer. And should the newspapers review a book in translation that has turned out particularly well, more often than not, the reviewers will praise the author’s style, forgetting that what they are holding in their hands is a translated text. Paradoxically, this sort of anonymity is the highest praise for a translator. But it is frustrating all the same. Thus, the translator should also have a high frustration threshold to go along with his ambition.

→ The translator should also be the author’s ideal reader, an astute psychologist, a more than passable mind-reader, a mimic, a mime, a person with a sense for drama, for the act of translation is dramatic and dynamic in the extreme, as this book will hopefully make adequately clear.

→ And last but not least (a cliché, see Chapter III), the translator should be a born gambler, because there is no guarantee that his translation has succeeded until he has put the final dot on that final proverbial ‘i’. And even then, will the editor like the translation? And will the reader?

→ As a corollary to the above, the translator should also believe, holding this particular truth to be self-evident, that translation from one language into another is not a “necessary evil”, but a highly creative and complex act that benefits and gratifies all around, adding to the vast and wonderful literary storehouse of the world.

II. Translation: An Elementary Paradigm

In this chapter, we will develop an elementary paradigm of translation, examining each of its components separately. Though the complete paradigm is up for debate, especially between theorists and practitioners of the art of translation, setting one up may help us to a better understanding of the process of translation. Since every work contains its own answer to how best to render it into another language, and each translator’s consciousness and gifts differ from the consciousness and gifts of all other translators, this paradigm is open ended, potentially branching off in countless directions. Its elemental parts, however, remain constant.

So for our purposes, this being a book on the basic elements of translation, let’s begin with the following basic paradigm:

TEXT I ⇒ TRANSLATOR ⇒ TEXT II

The translator is faced with the original, or source text (Text I) that he will render into a new text in another language (Text II). This basic paradigm tells us that the translator takes Text I and turns it into Text II. However, in terms of this reduced paradigm, the translator will produce something that falls far short of a satisfying translation. Why? Because it will not contain sufficient content (meaning and matter), and will therefore fail at its task of communicating the original work. Why?

The following, expanded paradigm includes what the first paradigm has left out of consideration:

AUTHOR ⇒ TEXT I ⇒ TRANSLATOR ⇒ TEXT II

The author produces Text I that is translated by the translator and rendered into Text II (the translation). If the translator works with an awareness of this expanded paradigm, the translation will show improvement, because it will have taken into consideration the often neglected fact that the original text did not spring out of a vacuum, but that someone willed it into existence. It was written by someone with intent to accomplish something – first and foremost, to communicate. As we will discuss below, intent, or aim, is always part of the meaning and so, without considering the author to the extent that he may be present in his work, we will end up translating only his words instead of his text. By text I mean the entity that included not only the words, but also the product of their interaction with each other and with the whole, which in turn charges the words with extra meaning. In short, there is a reciprocity. Put another way, since the whole is more than the sum of its parts – the Gestalt theory! – the text, too, is more than the words on the page. But more of this in another book; it would take us too far afield.

AUTHOR ⇒ TEXT I ⇒ TRANSLATOR ⇒ TEXT II ⇒ AUDIENCE

On the other side of the equation stand the audience, who also need to be taken into account by the translator. For one thing, he is translating into their language, and must keep in mind how they will read his text. He must be familiar with their way of thinking and responding, the tribal patterns imbedded in their brains, how they will perceive and react to certain words or expressions, and what expectations they might have. For example, each community of speakers expects certain ideas to be put a certain way, and certain types of content to assume certain shapes. And then, too, there is language as culture; the word tilos, which literally means forbidden or prohibited, might rub a Londoner or New Yorker the wrong way. The translator should strive to understand how his readers are “wired” to receive the text that he is producing for their benefit, how they are used to deciphering information in their own language. This is why we have expanded our paradigm.

Having said this, there is yet another element we need to add to our paradigm – the translator as the reader of Text I. So let us expand it still further:

AUTHOR ⇒ TEXT I ⇒ READER ⇒ TRANSLATOR ⇒ TEXT II ⇒ AUDIENCE

The author produces Text I that is read (processed) by the reader, who then acts in his capacity as translator in order to produce Text II (the translation) for the benefit of a new readership. This paradigm calls for the translator to be a highly astute reader of the original, because one can translate only as much as one perceives.

Simple as this paradigm may seem, it carries profound implications for the act of translation. It brings up the following questions begging for an answer:

→What is the relationship of the author to the text?

→What is the relationship of the reader to the text?

→What is the relationship between the author and the reader?

→Since in our paradigm the reader is also the translator, what is the relationship between reader and translator? Where does one end and the other begin?

→How should the reader handle the text for maximum comprehension? And does he need to read it differently as its future translator? (Could a small doze of schizophrenia stand the translator in good stead?)

→What is the relationship of Text I to Text II?

→Who is the author of Text II?

→How did Text II get “written”?

→What is the ideal relationship between Text II and the audience?

→Where do the translator’s loyalties lie? With Text I or Text II? With the author or the reader? Or both?

→What is translation?

Providing an exhaustive answer to these questions would take us far afield into the metaphysics of creation, the quantum physics of how thought and intent turn energy into matter (the text). But in this book, we need not worry about these things. For the time being, we will concentrate on a practical approach to translation, from the act of reading the original text through the act of reproducing it in another language. I promised you a handbook and a textbook, not a philosophical treatise. I know of no person who has learned to swim from a book or learned to play the violin by studying the theory behind the Kodály method. It is practice and a growing awareness of “how things work” in translation that will best serve our purposes.

So let us go and see how things work and, as we proceed, let us set up a number of basic rules about translation that will be indicated by an arrow, thus: ⇒.

III. The Elements of Editing
Part One: Taking Stock

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in,

shock-proof shit detector.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Time and again I meet with the same thing. Translators take a text and reproduce it verbatim in another language without first familiarizing themselves with its scope, nature, content, and intent. Predictably, the results are less than satisfactory. When I ask my students to provide a summary of the text they have been asked to translate, they often can’t do it. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising. So let us make the following Rule #1:

⇒ Familiarize yourself with the text before you attempt your translation.

Gain text recognition. A sure-fire way to check whether you understand a text is as follows: Summarize the contents in one short sentence. When I ask my students to put a summary sentence at the head of their translations, the summary they provide is an infallible indicator of the quality of their translation. The more astute the summary, the better the translation. A corollary to this observation is that the shorter the summary, the better and more focused the translation, the longer the summary, the weaker and more unfocused the translation. If you know what you are saying, it doesn’t take much to say it. Long, drawn-out summaries indicate that the student hasn’t put his finger on the pulse of the text, the one main thought that gives it cohesion – and what’s more important for our purposes – will give the translation cohesion. (Note: Though literature, if it is worth its salt, cannot be summarized at all, any piece of nonfiction should lend itself to a simple summary.)

The point is simply this: translation is possible only where the reading of the text is adequate. By adequate reading I mean that you have gone beyond a simple understanding of the text and have made a mental note of every aspect of it that will need to be taken into account when you render it into English. Another way of putting this is that you have worked the text over thoroughly with your critical intelligence. You know what the piece is about, what kind of piece it is, what its intention is; you have noted its style and have decided whether it will work for you in English; you have also made a mental note of any inconsistencies and possible faults in logic, as well as what might be called staccato logic, where you will need to add a word or two, possibly a phrase or a full sentence, to make the logic clear in English; and you have also noticed whether you will have to provide further information or, on the contrary, where information overwhelms the text and can be edited out without detriment to the meaning. In short, you must be able to separate the wheat from the chaff as you read – essential from nonessential content. The point is this: Without an in-depth reading of the original, you will have nothing to translate except the words on the page.

If there’s one major cause for the spread of mass illiteracy, it’s the fact that everybody can read and write.

PETER DE VRIES, The Tents of Wickedness

What are we saying? Due to the decline of lucid writing, the would-be translator must gain editorial skills. Throughout the years nonfiction has shown an alarming tendency toward opaqueness of thought, messiness of logic, and shapelessness of form. It seems to be losing its shores. In the worst case scenario, it goes from nowhere and ends up nowhere, while inside it is like a can of worms crowding in on each other to no avail. As if to add fuel to the fire, the misapprehension prevails that the more you write, the more you say. “Purple prose” abounds. Sentences are inordinately long, making it extremely difficult to grasp their content. First the sentence, then its hard-won comprehension – that is no way to communicate effectively. It is therefore part of the translator’s task to make sense of the original where it is lacking, not the reader’s. There is also at times a great deal of needless repetition, adjective piled atop adjective, and way too much inessential content. One wonders whom the writer is writing for. Why does he bother if he doesn’t wish to be understood? And – provided that it is called for – why doesn’t the translator feel the drive to change another’s copy, a drive that some say is stronger than love or hate?

The three stages of editing

For the sake of convenience, editing the source text before translation can be broken down into three stages. The first stage focuses on the source text itself on its own merits. This stage of the editing process involves taking stock of your raw material. Its official name is content editing. The second stage is concerned with spotting aspects of the source text that may not lend themselves to easy translatability, while stage three is concerned with creating a plot, or blueprint, for your translation. The last two stages of editing involve keeping one critical eye on the source text and one critical eye on the needs of your nascent translation. They involve a shift in perspective, a move away from the source text in favor of the translated text. The three stages together make up pre-translation editing.

Stage one of pre-translation editing focuses on the body of the original text. It involves spotting repetitions, tautologies, “fillers” that add nothing to the text except for so much debris, wordiness, and clichés, more of which as we go along. It should also focus relentlessly and unmercifully on sloppy thinking and faulty logic. Are the thoughts clear? Do they flow unobstructed from one sentence to the next? Since nonfiction texts are written to communicate thought and information, is the transfer of information quick and easy? Does the style used serve the purposes of the piece, or does it work against it? Note: The other side of the coin involves identifying the virtues of the original text, so they won’t slip inadvertently out of your grasp in the process of translation. If they are really virtues, they will act as your guides, helping you with your choices. Trust yourself to them.

Stage two of pre-translation editing still focuses on the original text, but this time, the hunt is on for troublesome or problematic sentences. Sentences in Hungarian and English have such different functions that you must make a special point of not letting the form or character of the Hungarian sentence influence you when you render its content into English, otherwise, you will end up with Hunglish. Note: Troublesome and problematic sentences are basically of four types:

→Those that carry too much information to be easily understood and must therefore be turned into two or more sentences;

→Those that are overly convoluted in structure compared to English sentences;

→Those that should be separated, but are joined, instead, by the innocuous connective és / and, which makes for weak writing;

→Sentence fragments that for some unfathomable reason are considered forceful and effective by some writers who should know better.

Stage two of pre-translation editing should also focus on spotting peculiarities of style and expression that are foreign to the English language and should therefore be put another way, but without losing or distorting the sense. It should also identify mannerisms of thought or expression that will contribute nothing to your English text except for a certain amount of Hunglish – Hungarian ways of thinking and expression presented in English, more of which in Chapter XXII. This stage of pre-translation editing should also take note of Hungarian cultural and historical references that may need to be expanded on for the benefit of your English readership, or possibly dropped, or footnoted.

Stage three of pre-translation editing focuses on constructing a plot for your translation. The good news is that as you learn to read critically, the three stages of pre-translation editing will merge into one, just as the reader, editor, and translator in you will also merge into one, existing simultaneously in time. The little red warning light in your head will go off automatically, as it were, FLASH, FLASH, FLASH! without any conscious effort on your part, and the solutions, too, will show more willingness to present themselves without undue blood, sweat, and tears. Or not. But either way, the point and Rule #2 is as follows:

⇒ Take stock of your raw material before you translate it.

Here is an exercise in editing a text before translation. This pre-translation work is especially important for the novice translator who may not otherwise recognize the pitfalls or minefields imbedded in the source text. Read the paragraph, and then make a note of what you think of it. Be sure the note is detailed.

Később a teljes kiállítást változatlan formában átvette és bemutatta a berlini Neue Nationalgalerie is. A főként a XX. századi klasszikus avantgárdot gyűjtő múzeum egy éven át, három részletben, A XX. század terei (Räume des XX. Jahrhunderts) címen szokatlan, meglepő összefüggésben mutatott be egyébként jól ismert remekműveket, hogy kronológiától és stíluskategóriáktól függetlenül felhívja a figyelmet a művekben manifesztálódó TÉR-fogalom soha más korban nem tapasztalt újszerűségére. A sorozat harmadik részében (Räume III. Korrespondenzen-Antithesen) 2002. október 28. és 2003. január 26. között lehetett látni Jovánovics installációját, mely A másik én tematikus alcímet kapta. A főrendező Dr. Roland März arra törekedett, hogy Jovánovics termét dialógusba állítsa egyrészt az egész múzeum középpontjába helyezett Sal Le Witt-művel, mely architektúra az architektúrában (Modular Cube, 1970), másrészt magával az épület legendás négyzeteivel is, melyekből Mies van der Rohe a házat konstruálta.

Now read the paragraph again, and if you haven’t done so, identify the following:

→Any unnecessary words, tautologies, redundancies, empty phrases, clichés, and jargon;

→Anything that is not essential and serves only to hinder the flow of information;

→Any sloppy thinking that hinders the piece from getting to the point, thereby working against forward momentum.

You will find the solutions below, but don’t peek. Since this book is written in English, the Hungarian examples will be discussed in English. We are going to look at the paragraph together, editing it word by word, phrase by phrase, as needed, looking for traps and pitfalls that will have to be taken into account when doing our translation.

teljes kiállítás → Tautology. Unless otherwise stated, an exhibition, like anything else, is complete. That’s what makes it an exhibition. The next two words in the sentence, változatlan formában, make teljes kiállítás doubly redundant.

átvette és bemutatta a berlini Neue Nationalgalerie is → is is redundant unless, of course, the article mentions beforehand which other museum or museums have hosted the show. However, it does not, which means that átvette begs the question, and the reader will notice that something (the name of the other museum or museums) is missing.

A főként XX. századi klasszikus avantgárdot gyűjtő múzeum → Unnecessarily wordy and vague. The twentieth century avantgarde is understood to be “classical”, at least, in English terminology. Edit out the word klasszikus, or substitute it with another expression, if you think that it accords with the author’s intent and will help you convey information.

szokatlan, meglepő összefüggésben mutatott be → szokatlan and meglepő are synonyms, and your reader will pick up on it. Did the red light in your head go off? It should have! Don’t babble; say what you mean by finding one good English word for the two Hungarian synonyms.

egyébként jól ismert remekműveket → Tautology. A masterpiece hanging on the wall of a museum is, by definition, well known. Also, why egyébként? Edit it out! It is an empty cliché.

soha más korban nem tapasztalt újszerűsége → If something is new and novel, then it could not have existed earlier. That’s what makes it new and novel. Edit soha más korban nem tapasztalt out of your translation, or find one adjective that will replace it. This would be the brave thing to do.

A sorozat harmadik részében → What happened to the first two? Sloppy thinking. Also, your reader will want to know what the other two exhibitions were.

lehetett látni → Why lehetett? An empty cliché.

A másik én tematikus alcímet kapta → Why tematikus alcím? The subtitle, A másik én, is thematic by definition.

A főrendező … arra törekedett → Why törekedett? It seems to me that the chief curator not only tried, but succeeded in setting up the exhibition.

Az egész múzeum középpontjában → Why egész múzeum? A museum is a museum is a museum. Besides, if we are not familiar with the museum layout, the adjective egész loses its meaning. Did the writer mean the lobby or the main exhibition hall? There’s no way of knowing.

What a short paragraph, and so many editorial “hits”. Not bad for a first try.

corvina@lira.hu
www.corvinakiado.hu

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