the revised edition (2007)

One wet Thursday, as it were, many years ago, I decided to give a group of students a piece writing in Italian and English. They had to decide which language was the original, which the translation. It was an odd piece and they soon found the four or five places where the texts were different. They opted for the Italian, which seemed all proper and correct. The English was bizarre to say the least. It included the expression 'he shut himself together.' It was D.H. Lawrence.
I was fascinated. Infallibly, by finding where translation differed from original, students whose English was far from perfect were able to identify those places where a writer diverged from standard usage. The reason is evident enough. While it's fairly easy to translate content and standard mannerisms, when the meaning of a text lies in the distance between itself and what the reader expected, then it is difficult for translator to follow. Looking at all the ways a translation differs from its original, you can begin to get a good sense of how a writer worked and what his particular take on language and indeed life was. Because for each author who has anything interesting to say, the problems are always different. That's what this book is about.
There are chapters on Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Beckett and various other authors, which are at once essays on translation, and on the authors concerned. Each chapter interconnects with the others, and I hope at that by the end of the book the reader will have a sense of the way, however intimate the translator may become with the writer, there is always a huge distance between original and translation. Which isn't a reason for not translating.

...author's note to new edition

This is a completely revised edition of a book written ten years ago. As such it represents a radical attempt to extend the book’s readership, to move it out of a niche and put it in the way of any reader interested in style, language and literature.

Why was this necessary? Translating Style was never an overly academic book. It was never jargon bound. I had wanted to show how the experience of translation can tell us a lot about literature, give us insights into the books we love that we will not pick up from regular criticism. And I wanted to suggest that an understanding of literary strategies is essential for the translator. The only way to do this, I thought, was by analysing extended examples of stylish writing, together with their corresponding translations. To draw in as many people as possible I chose authors and books that many readers would be familiar with: the great modernists in particular: Lawrence Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, plus two favourites of mine, Barbara Pym and Henry Green. The problem was that since I looked extensively at Italian translations of those books (Italian being my second language), readers with little or no Italian would feel left out. I resigned myself to the idea that, for better or worse, such a book could only appeal to a limited audience.

Yet again and again, over the years, people with no Italian at all told me they had read Translating Style and found it fascinating. If only, they said, they could get a slightly better sense of the trans-formations that had taken place in the Italian translation! This edition attempts to meet the needs of these readers, to demystify the Italian translations and hence to make my comments on the original English texts more persuasive.

How? Imperfectly no doubt, using back-translations and, occasionally, glosses. From the second chapter on, from the point that is where we begin to discuss the work of our six chosen authors, every passage of Italian translation is followed by a back-translation, which is to say by the same passage returned (back-translated) into English. This allows the reader to see what changes in diction, focusing, imagery and content have occurred in the Italian versions. These are not literal or word-for-word back-translations, but nor are they attempts to return the Italian to stylish English. They simply seek to show what the Italian reader is getting in terms of information and its arrangement. Where necessary, a word-for-word gloss is given of some key Italian phrases.

It will sound laboured perhaps, but the intention is always to have fun, to sharpen the mind through a reflection on how the reading experience is constructed. The translation, or for those with no Italian, the back-translation, serves as a short of shadow text, or simply alternative, comparison with which gives us new insights into the English original.

Translating Style also has an underlying polemic that emerges in a final chapter written specifically for this edition. One of the effects of globalisation has been that more literature – novels, plays and poetry – is translated than ever before. Often translations are published simultaneous with publication in the original language. Thus the community to whom a writer addresses his work is no longer specifically national, but international, multi-lingual. The last chapter considers the consequences of a situation where writers often work with eventual translation in mind and readers, particularly outside the English-speaking world, read most of their literature in translation. It is quite possible that this will change the way language is used in literature, and indeed the very content of the books we read.

...and the reviews

Perspectives on translation

Isabel Quigly

You should never, I am told, take the smallest notice of puffs on book jackets. But when Umberto Eco, no less, is quoted as saying that Tim Parks's Translating Style is 'attractive and interesting,' my nose begins to twitch just a little, like that of Fiver, the rabbit with extra-sensory perception in Watership Down. And how right Eco is, though the praise, to my mind is a little faint for a stunningly successful essay on the nuts and bolts of translation, the most useful, from a translator's point of view, that I have ever come across.
As its readership will be confined to people with good Italian, it cannot expect to become a big seller - which is a pity, when so much that it deals with is piercingly true and interesting to anyone who cares about language in general, any language. In fact, those with only basic Italian (or perhaps the remains of school Latin) should be able to get something out of it, for one thing a close encounter with the original English writers examined, for another a sense of the awesome complexity of translating, of the subtle twists and turns, oddities and quiddities, the exactness demanded and the necessary preparation for any literary translation. Tim Parks believes (a counsel of perfection, of course) that at a high level this is impossible without a deep knowledge and understanding of the culture, history, ideas and background (quite apart from the language itself) of the novelist being translated; and in taking a group of what he calls modernist English writers (Lawrence, Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Beckett, Henry Green and Barbara Pym) and examining in close detail passages from their work and Italian translations from it, he shows the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of reaching the 'interior' language in which a tale is told and a world put across.
Occasionally he (mischievously but usefully) asks his university students, highly motivated, intelligent teachers and translators, to identify the source language from two passages: which is the original, which the translation? In the case of a passage from Women in Love almost everyone regularly chose the Italian piece as the original and thought Lawrence the writer of a rather clumsy translation. Parks then goes on to show the inner workings of Lawrence's mind and spirit (well, not quite), the often tormented feelings that govern his use of fractured, jerky language and the near impossibility of conveying it in that of another culture, in an Italian that is often inadequate to suggest the full range of his meaning, which requires the richness of English with its broader linguistic background (bit off here, I would never suggest that one language is 'richer' than another). The translation, a good, syntactically straightforward piece of prose, seems to the Italians more likely to be the original than the often immensely difficult language used by Lawrence, with its suggestiveness, its implications, its often eccentric grammar. Yet Lawrence is generally considered a straightforward writer of English by foreign translators, certainly in comparison with Joyce or Beckett.
All Parks's examples are rewarding and stimulating, and (more surprisingly, perhaps) he has made the book so readable that I have read it anywhere and everywhere, in bed, on buses, in a hospital waiting room, even in the bath. It is that sort of book, approachable, exciting. Let me just mention his chapter on Barbara Pym, who, unlike the others, is not generally called 'great', but whose linguistic roots are, like theirs, in soil too foreign and specialized for a translator to replant them entirely successfully in another. With her, Parks suggests, the difficulty is social as well as spiritual. What he calls the 'untranslatable commonplace' in her writing, the banal chitchat of everyday, the narrow social background, the artefacts and seemingly trivial detail that fill it, all make it difficult or impossible to translate satisfactorily: the tiny emphases of feeling, or class and period, are lost in their transfer to another sphere just as much as Lawrence's more scratchy, more original outlook (again I'm not happy with this - Pym's aesthetic is most sophisticated).
In a short review it is equally impossible to deal with all the linguistically subcutaneous matter of this remarkable book. In a way it is depressing for a translator. If English is so hard to convey in Italian, how about our efforts to put Italian into English? Parks believes that a profound knowledge of the original country, as well as the language, is needed. How can this be, in the commercial world of quickly demanded translations? Parks himself lives in Italy, is steeped in its everyday as well as intellectual culture; as a translator, he has a huge advantage over the rest of us, the outsiders. His book is wonderfully sparky, concise and often amusing, as well as rewarding. I have learned more from it, and been made to think more about translation, than I have from any other comparable text - but then, what other book on translation is really comparable? This one seems entirely one off.

When doting becomes passion

The Daily Telegraph - 20 December 1997

Translating Style: the English Modernists and their Italian Translations, by Tim Parks

THIS illuminating book should be read closely by anyone interested in the art of translation. Tim Parks belongs to that rarest breed of translator- one who also writes. He is a brilliantly idiosyncratic novelist who brings to the difficult task of translation a keen understanding of the way other novelists work. His renderings into English of such diffuse authors as Alberto Moravia, ltalo Calvino, Antonio Tabucchi, and the immensely learned Roberto Calasso are notable for being in a recognisable language rather than that awkward transatlantic hybrid that declares itself instantly as translationese.
Parks lives in Italy, and in recent years has been lecturing on literary translation at the University Institute of Modern Languages in Milan. Translating Style is based, in part, on the lectures he has given and the seminars he has conducted. He invites his students, both English and Italian, to identify the original language in which a fragment of text was written. For example:
"In a few moments the train was running through the disgrace of outspread suburbia. Everybody in the carriage was on the alert, waiting to escape. At last they were under the huge arch of the station, in the tremendous shadow of the town. B shut himself together-he was in now."
When confronted with this passage, the majority of students are struck by the Italianness of the prose, by what Parks calls "an extravagance of diction ("disgrace") and "an unusual and vague collocation" ("outspread suburbia"). They also find the use of the word "escape" vague and inexact - what is everybody escaping from, and why? And as for "he was in now" - he was in what? They reach the conclusion, invariably, that the quotation comes form an Italian novel poorly translated into English. It comes, in fact, from D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love.
Parks demonstrates, in his discussion MrsDalloway, translated by the eminent scholar and feminist Nadia Fusini, how the addition of a single word ormai ("now") changes the sense of what Virginia Woolf intended. Sometimes the very title suggests an entirely different book, as when Henry Green's Doting becomes Passioni. Tim Parks is especially interesting on the problems involved in translating Green, and quotes from a translation of Party Going which was rejected by the commissioning publisher, Adelphi. All of Green's novels have been bought by either Adelphi or Einaudi, but so far Only Doting has appeared. The reason for the non-appearance in Italy of his finest works has much to do with Green's quirky syntax and the frequent absence of definite or indefinite articles. One translator after another has attempted, at the publisher's insistence, to clarify what Green wishes to remain opaque, with results verging on the banal. The whole point of Henry Green is his curious style. Take the style away and little is left, since he is not a storyteller by nature or intention (actually, I feel Green is a great storyteller, but the stories work because of the style).
The would-be translator of Barbara Pym has no missing articles to contend with, but just as many insurmountable problems. Pym revels in the commonplace, in the cliché that covers up what a character is really thinking. Each language has its own colloquialisms which, when translated literally, sound either daft or incomprehensible.
Translating Style makes the reader aware of the huge challenge a conscientious translator faces whenever he or she takes on the task of reproducing faithfully not only the language of a book, but also the life and mind that inform it. Many bad translations are published because publishers, both here and in America, are stingy with time and cash. Most of Primo Levi's works need re-translating, for instance, as do the novels of Cesare Pavese.
The sole aspect of translating that Parks does not ad- dress is that of the writer who appears more significant in a foreign language. The French still admire Charles Morgan, whose windily philosophical fictions they keep in print, whereas we have long since relegated them to the second- hand bookshops. But that is a mystery that demands a whole book to itself.

Review of Tim Parks Translating Style: The English Modernists and their Italian Translations.

By Prof Jean Boase-Beir, from The Translator - I don't seem to have a date, but it's early 1999

At the beginning of the book, Tim Parks sets out clearly his twofold aim: by comparing English originals and their Italian translations he will both offer insight into the originals and point to the difficulties of translating them.
The first and, in my view, more interesting of these aims, though not an entirely novel approach to textual criticism - I A.Richards (1953) suggested a similar one - certainly allows a new view of translation loss. That famous saying attributed to Frost - "poetry is what gets lost in translation" - is generally looked at as though it were a pronouncement on translation rather than poetry, but here Parks' analysis of what is poetic in prose puts the statement back into its proper perspective: by examining what is lost in translation he shows us that this is what is stylistically essential to the text. The second aim, to show that translation can be improved by textual criticism, turns out to be less important, though certainly not without interest.
A book, then, for anyone with an interest in translation studies, whether they are studying, teaching or practising translation. But equally a book for literary critics, essential for anyone concerned with Modernist fiction, and of great value to those working in the field of stylistics.
After presenting his general intentions, Parks gives a detailed analysis of the style of several important 20th century authors, in each case illustrated by one or two works which are examined alongside their Italian translations. After a brief overview of the author's style a longish passage is given from the work in question, immediately followed by its translation. Parks then begins his analysis, pointing out the stylistic differences between the translated text and the original.
It is upon these differences that Parks builds the main argument of the book: where translation deviates from its original we have the clearest possible view of the style of that original.
Thus a study of lexical equivalents in Women in Love and its Italian translation highlights Lawrence's use of words, even of those which might, on first reading, have seemed insignificant. Fearfully, for example, becomes tremendamente, ("tremendously") in the Italian, yet the word Lawrence chose echoes a whole chain of other words and expressions running through the book. Here Parks underlines a constant problem of translation: when links between words and concepts get lost, there is a weakening of textual cohesion in the translation.
Parks' analytical method is to take the reader, after examining English and Italian texts and noting the differences, both into closer examination of the original and behind it to the author's overall style in order then, in a process reminiscent of Spitzer's "philological circle" (Spitzer 1948), to return to the text and some of the difficulties of the translation.
This circular process is repeated with each author. We see how Joyce's striking use of alliteration and inverted syntax are lost in the Italian translations, so we go to the originals and evaluate the importance of these stylistic features there. Joyce, we find, is deliberately creating a sense of confusion and uncertainty, yet Pavese's version of A Portrait of the Artist (1976), appears to be trying to avoid confusion.
This tendency on the part of the translator to make things less obscure is replicated in the translation of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway: where Woolf uses vagueness of reference to create a sense of disorientation, the translator makes an effort to clear things up for the reader, thereby creating a text which is no longer a mirror of Woolf's view of life.
Language which plays games, drawing attention to itself and undermining clear links with its referents is especially difficult to translate; and the comparison of Italian translations of Beckett with the originals show that much of this foregrounding of language has been lost. Again, the loss serves to emphasize what the original does and why. Barbara Pym, on the other hand, creates irony through the contrast between a conventional view and that of the narrator, which the reader is asked to share. Conventional meanings are signalled by the use of inverted commas, and, in a translation, it is essential that these signals are preserved. The Italian translation, incredibly, fails to preserve them, so the contrast of points of view is lost, and with it much of the irony of the novel.
Similar loss becomes apparent in the translations of Henry Green's novels, which use distorted syntax to disorientate the reader and create a sense of hesitation, confusion and uncertainty. The Italian translation is much less hesitant, and here again, it is the difference which points up what is really essential in the original.
Early on in the book (p. 5), Parks notes how difficult it is for a non-native speaker to assess "the appropriateness or otherwise of a deviation from standard discourse". This seems to me a central point in his argument. Without saying this very explicitly, Parks is in fact providing an intriguing answer to all those who dismiss the idea that style is deviation with the question "Deviation form what?" There have, of course, been many attempts to answer this question, notably by the Prague School scholars (for example, Mukarovsky 1964), who envisaged deviation from a proposed standard form of the language, but Parks' answer is more concrete: translations, almost without exception less stylistically marked than the originals, provide the standard against which the deviation of the original can be measured. This is an unusual and interesting way of approaching the question of style as deviation, but one senses that Parks, in failing to take note of the wider context of his work, never quite realises just how clever he is being.
Recognition of deviation is, then, one problem a translator always faces. Transfer between cultures with widely different attitudes and conventions is another. A further difficulty for the translator is to avoid imposing his or her own personal interpretation on the work. How to do this, and at the same time to avoid the invisibility of which Venuti (1995) warns, is a philosophical and practical question which exercises everyone working in the field of translation studies. Yet another difficulty is that of credibility: if you mirror the original in deviating from standard discourse, you are likely to be thought simply a bad translator. Translation tends to normalize partly because this is what is expected of it; critics wait to pounce on every unusual construction, for what is seen as a virtue in original writing is seen as a vice in translation. Faced with such prejudices many translators give in, and try, in Venuti's terms, to become as invisible as possible. Parks lays the faults of normalizing translation before us again and again: ambiguities are sealed off, tangles are unravelled, twists are straightened and hurdles are removed. This gives rise to a familiar and depressing catalogue of translation losses: loss of alliteration, assonance, semantic linking, key images, word play, complexity. Above all, what concerns Parks, though he does not give it a name, is loss of iconicity, the mirroring of content in form. He hints at this when he quotes Beckett as saying that Joyce's "work is not about something, it is that something itself" (p.123). The important point here, it seems to me, is that Beckett was in fact having us on. The text only pretends to be the thing itself. Green's twisted sentences and stops and starts are not real hesitancy, they merely represent it, and Woolf's mimicry of "unhingedness" is in the end just mimicry. If a translator fails to preserve the mirror-link between text and world, that world will be lost to the reader, leaving merely textual confusion, in Woolf's and Green's case, or banalities in Pym's.
Throughout the book, Parks is careful not to appear to criticize his chosen translators. This is important, because a poor translation would tell us little of general import. Logically, however, in protesting that analysis does not constitute criticism, he is suggesting that any translation will such losses. This is just one of many important questions about the nature of writing and translation which are raised in this book. Parks is not especially concerned with providing solutions or evaluating translations, even though he does point in passing to many inadequacies in those he examines. In focussing on how translation can act as a tool for criticism, he has produced something quite different from recent books on translation, which give histories (Venuti 1995) or provide models for the process of translation (Hatim & Mason 1997). The book differs, too, from recent studies of style, which, with the exception of Freeborn (1996), generally behave as though literary translation did not exist.
Parks, himself a writer, teacher and translator, brings many talents to the writing of this book. Though he wrongly maintains that translation theorists in general regard literature as a branch of linguistics and so avoid value judgement (p. vi), thus misrepresenting both linguistics and translation studies, as well as ignoring the existence of stylistics, which indeed attempts to give a solid base for value judgements, much as Parks does himself, such prejudices in no way affect his judgement of the texts. This is extremely sensitive and precise, even if he does occasionally miss things, such as Lawrence's mischievous word-play on venison and venery. Yet what the book lacks is a little more focus on its main arguments, a lack which partly arises from the circular nature of his analysis, inevitably difficult to reproduce in linear fashion for the book. Tentativeness is not a trait one associates with Parks, despite the ambivalence in his novels, but as his emphasis shifts between his two-fold aims, the reader is sometimes left wondering what it is he is really proving. It is perhaps because of the inherent circularity of method that he feels the need to provide a framework in the first and final chapters. Yet I feel this is not entirely successful. While the first chapter is very helpful in its presentation of general issues, the hints at classroom practice, taken up again at the end, seem something of a red herring. In the final chapter the reader is asked to participate in the game of guessing which of two texts is the original, and, whereas up to now the direction of translation, English to Italian, has been consistent, we are suddenly presented here with Italian originals. Fascinating as the exercise is, the links to what has gone before are just not clear enough. One is left with a feeling of too many loose ends; a concluding chapter which drew together some of the earlier arguments, rather than introducing too many new ones, would have been more useful.
There is a slight additional problem in the lack of back-translation from the Italian; we are presented with detailed and fascinating discussions, and it seems a pity to risk frustrating those readers who have little Italian.
Hard going at times, then, but well worth the effort, for the reader is rewarded with unexpected and often brilliant insights. This is certainly one of the most interesting books on translation to appear recently. And, if it raises more questions that it answers, that is surely in the nature of translation.

purchases

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