Translation -> the Cinderella of Literature?

It was said, in publications from two sides of the Atlantic, that native speakers of English have little interest in works that are not written in English. I am not sure if it has more to do with lack of curiosity than ignorance on the existence of such works. Hence, translation is of vital importance. However, good translators are seldom recognised and their work is usually unheralded.

British Council has this very interesting site that talks about translation of original works into other languages. I think anyone seriously interested in literature pay this site a visit.

http://www.literarytranslation.com/

And I recommend reading this highly interesting, and illuminating article on translation of Arabic words to English. And the author mentioned n author's translated works sold more than all his works in Arabic. Talk about international recognition, eh?

"The Cairo trilogy of the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz has sold more copies in English than the whole of Mahfouz’s work in Arabic."

Click here for the full article.


I personally would continue writing in two languages, for different audiences. And I would love to translate pieces originally written in one language to the other.

My review of Isabel Allende's My Invented Country

This came out in The Star today. I apologise for my rather unwieldy language structure. Should had edited this piece more rigorously. I've taken the libery to amend here, some glaring grammatical mistakes that are found in the original copy.
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Bookshelf
Friday April 14, 2006

A life bound to homeland

Review by CLARISSA LEE

My Invented Country – A Memoir

Author: Isabel Allende

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 224 pages



THIS mesmerising memoir of Isabel Allende allows us a peek into the forces that have shaped the woman into a well-loved storyteller, who, despite meandering in and out of her main tale with little anecdotes and asides, never loses track of her original narrative, but masterfully weaves all the bits and pieces into the mother tale. She is just at home writing tales of epic proportions such as The House of Spirits as she is in giving us little tales of love and food through Aphrodite: The Love of Food and the Food of Love.

In this memoir, Allende superbly balances between revealing details that might be considered intimate, of some of her relatives and friends, but not unmasking them completely or depriving them of their privacies. It is as we know so much about them, while not really knowing them. It is the same when she talks about herself, or her innermost thoughts. But it is her style of keeping the reader in suspense as she brings us closer and closer to her psyche, often pulling us out without our realising it until we notice that she has ceased speaking of the intimate and are regaling us with tales of her native country and its people.

Yet it is in her telling us of the little known aspects of her country (to foreigners) that inevitably bring us up close with her unpredictability, to the capriciousness of humanity, and unveil to her readers the soil of her roots that is firmly packed at the core of her being. In reading Allende’s description of Chile, I am reminded of how like Malaysia it is in terms of its hospitality, its vastly uncritical society and the people’s strong patriotrism that brooks no insults or criticism from strangers to the land. Every social trespass is heavily frowned upon, the Chileans make a national pastime out of complaining about society and themselves, inefficiency and bureaucracy are a way of life, and patriachalism reigns supreme.

The people are stoic and perhaps fatalistic in their view of life, and most are highly religious. Divorce in Chile is near impossible, due to the insurmountable red tape and apathy, so couples seeking formal separation are caught in a legal bind. Moreover, Chile is still in the grip of class-consciousness, whereby the more European you look, the better your pedigree is considered, whereas if you look completely “native”, you are considered inferior. Such an attitude is not alien in many former colonies. However, make no mistake, Allende loves her native land, for all its faults and blemishes.

The memoir does not go in a linear order, even if it is chronological in detailing the events of her life, and of her people. We get an idea of Allende’s early years that have shaped her to be the kind of writer she is today. We know that Latin America has been successful in bringing forth great writers who are loved the world over, and from Chile, besides Allende, we know of Pablo Neruda and a few others.

Allende alludes to an oral tradition of poetry and folklore that has never been lost to its people, and thus it was but a small leap to go from that to writing modern poetry and novels. She also paints for us the beauty of the Chilean landscape, the beauty that had made it the muse of its literature, universally understood by readers worldwide.

Neruda, Allende and many Latin American writers have been translated into many different languages, and as I read her memoir that has been translated from Spanish to English, the lyrical beauty of her language, as well as the unrelenting and profound narrative, remain intact and forceful.

More importantly, she talks about how being uprooted and having to live life over more than once, in different countries, from the time of her youth, have made her write compulsively in order to grasp an identity that is altogether tenuous and elusive. Her notion of the “invented country”, her memories and inventive attribution to her former homeland, to the Chile she has left behind physically but lives on in her imagination, is reminiscent of Rushdie’s anecdote of the “childhood” home he had never been in, but which became very real to him by way of the sepia photograph he gazed at daily as a child.

The imaginary homeland gave such writers, who have the perspective of outsiders, the freedom to place the beauty of a homeland in the foreground while engaging with its reality from afar. While remaining loyal to the spirit of their homeland, they give it critical consideration.

On hindsight, a newcomer to Allende would definitely get a good introductory account to her literary motivations (and be entertained by a remarkably entertaining writer) and her fans will get an ever closer view of the writer whose stories they adore.

A story of LM Montgomery's extraordinary career

If Malaysia has an author who could describe its landscapes as beautifully as she did Prince Edward Island in Canada, we wouldn't need the simpering Ministry of Tourism and its tired "tourist attraction" packages. Or waste so much money rewriting copy to tell people why they should visit Malaysia. But then again, the latter provided income for the likes of lesser souls like myself. :D

Click here to read about what this great writer had to say about her career.

I have to say that I always feel inspired when I read her stories, in a way that I do not get when reading girl stories by many other authors, including British ones, even if I find some of her ideals "Victorian", to quote Ilse Burnley of the Emily Books.

If you have not read her, you should. You can find some of her books in e-text at http://www.tickledorange.com/LMM/Writings.html

Endlessly waiting

That's what I'd been doing where my MA results are concerned. In a way, that irritates me greatly, because I'm not able to go away or make any concrete plans until then. All these uncertainty can sometimes be so galling, especially since I've been living with uncertainty for the past three and a half years. Never knowing what will happen every month. In fact, the most stable months I had was when I was doing my thesis, since I couldn't quite go anywhere. It was then a rather frustrating period, because I have to write but did not quite have anyone, other than occasionally my supervisor, to engage in depth discussion of the issue. Of course, I do know someone who was into the kind of stuff I was doing, but he was usually busy and his location was a little inaccessible to me, especially since I was at that time working far away from the rest of civilization. I longed for the kind of campus life of the mind, which I think I hardly ever get, even when I was doing my undergraduate degree. But I know that someday, real soon, I will achieve that.

On the other hand, things are going well creatively. When I started writing creatively again this year, after months of hiatus, I initially found the words stuck. Though I have had interesting ideas, I found myself unable to formulate them into interesting stories. It was as if I had this writer's block. But thank goodness I was able to ovecome it and had since written another short story. Not that I should since I've got two book reviews to complete. Egad! And I still need a lot of work in the technicalities of writing a story. I am beginning to read writer's guide, on top of the primary works themselves, just to get some tips on what constitute good structure. I have to be the journeyman before I can be the master and create my own form of story-telling. As to whether my stories are Malaysian, well, I'll let the readers decide. I believe that if one were to properly understand postcolonial theories, it works on the idea of subverting a particular narratorial hegemony to allow for the manifestations of greater possibilities and probabilities in the act of story telling. It is supposed to give voice to the subaltern and to remove the shroud of taboo from any subject or issue, especially issues that had made many people uncomfortable or afraid. It is not meant to create any sense of narrow nationalism, though I know some postcolonial theorists and literary academics are guilty of that.

This year I am aspiring to read more fiction, modern and classics, and so far I had succeeded, though in a smaller scale than I have hope. It is tough, especially since I've got loads of non-fiction and theoretical works to go through as well. I think it is about time that I take up less commitment in order to give my time freely to the few important commitments I need to prioritise for this year.

newspaper stories

There is two side to Malaysian newspaper articles. On the one hand, the stories are so repetitive that one can merely glaze over just from looking at them. Different players, similar mise-en-scene. Especially the political news. Even the speeches by the ministers are predictable. I wonder if they all have a pool of speechwriters that they share?

On the other hand, the story that lies behind every local Malaysians news has a possibility of the invisible narrative, that could be either more thrilling or less sensational that that which the newspaper had made up. But, when one does not know the real story behind the story, it is possible to let the imagination run wild with speculation, and when you do that, the little short story or novel is born. Like Capote's "In Cold Blood".

And sometimes, there are so many layers to a possible narrative, that a plain news story can be transformed into a gothic tale of human bestiality or hidden neurosis.

Here, we have all those tabloids, where stories can be rewritten to become bestsellers, and serious news that seem to try to beat the tabloids in their game.

V For Vendetta and Munich -tales of the two movies

I'd watched V for Vendetta on Friday, at a cinema, with a friend, and Munich yesterday, at home and alone. Different styles, different directions. Yet, a similar theme ran through both, which is violence used as means to an end. I have to give it that Spielberg's movie pays better attention to details compared to McTeigue's but both are similarly charged. It is an unfair comparison, seeing that Spielberg has had more experience but McTeigue is definitely at home in the science-fiction/fantasy genre, and knows how to tie in the loose ends, and made the action-packed movie a substantial one.

There is so much that can be reviewed, or critique about the two films (one made it to Malaysia, the other did not, maybe because of the subject matter) but I am merely making notes here of my observations, that might be usable in future articles, or writings.

Both were about fighting for a cause, and both involved the use of murder and violence. While the human element is played to the full in Munich, it is played out pretty well in V for Vendetta by Weaving and Portman, though sometimes, I feel that V was more like a very well-groomed automaton who always knew the right things to say. But His voice, I have to say that I was transfixed by the well-modulated voice, not something you hear everyday if you live where I do. The only time I saw any semblance of actual love for humanity, was the anguish he felt when Evey told him that she was leaving him. It was then that you realised that he actually had REAL feelings. In fact, the problem I would have with the movie, other than it being a rather unevolved political skit, is that we don't get to see more of the characters feelings, though I believe Weaving did a superb job, as did Portman. What is more, there seems to be too clear a demarcation between the good and the bad. And the bad seems almost mad and monstrous, all with the exception of Finch, the head of the police department, who despite being initially on the side of the "bad guys" (but one can see that he had a heart, as he wanted to save Evey from possible torture and death if she were to fall into the hands of the secret police, the "fingermen"), soon sided with the "good guys" towards the end of the movie, and helped toppe the government ala Guy Fawkes by bombing the Parliament. Maybe I'll read the graphic novel before I comment further, and that would require me to try fnding it in a bookshop. (:

As for Munich, I am sorry that it did not make Malaysia's cinema. Though a Hollywood movie, it does not have many of the irritating qualities of the current breed of movies from Tinseltown. I am so glad that Spielberg did not try to distinguish between the good and bad guys, and the beauty of the movie is how multi-faceted his characters are, even those who made but cameo appearances. It is a story about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where 11 Israeli atheletes were massacred by a bunch of Palestinian freedom-fighters. There were as many violent scenes in the movie as there were tender moments.

I have to say that it is the dialogue that made the characters come alive for me, and I almost wished that the "terrorists" (Palestinians in this movie, according to the Israeli government) that were being hunted would escape unscath, because they were so kind, gentlemanly and courteous in person. They were loving to their families, they obviously love their people and shared in the sufferings of their predicament, despite living bourgeoisie lives in Europe.

One must remember that the events that took place in this movie was just slightly after the six day war in 1967, which heralded the drawing up of West Bank border. It was also not too long after the repatriation of the Jews to Israel. Violence was then escalating as the stateless Palestinians fought to regain their land. It is important to mention that when the word "terrorist" were used in the film, it was not to influence the perception of the audience towards the Palestinians, but rather to let us view them through the eyes of the Israelis who were then at war with them. But when we observe individual interactions, and there are so many such instances of such in the movie, we soon realised that, if not for all these political hatred, these people could had been very good neighbours and friends with one another. Just like how the Bosnians and Serbs were friends prior to the Balkan conflict.

There was a scene showing Avner (the hired assassin, formerly of MOSSAD, the Israeli secret police) having a pow-wow with Ali, a Jordanian, who freely told the former that he hated the Jews, after having mistaken the former for a German. The latter did not love the Palestinians any better, but they were considered preferable to the Jews because the Arabs felt that the Jews had be the cause of their destabilisation. A few scenes down, when Avner was shooting Ali in the former's attempt to get away after assasinating the man the latter was guarding, you could almost see in Ali's eyes, the look of sadness and betrayal. And one sees that anguish in Avner's eyes (or maybe I'd imagined it) as the cameras did a close-up. The Israeli assassins were ethical in their attempt to inflict minimal damage while ridding themselves of their targets. One of the assassins, the bomb-maker Robert, was trying to get details of the telephone of one of the targets to plant a bomb, the target's daughter saw him doing that as she came in to practice on the piano. But the girl was unsuspecting and even smiled at Robert. He must had felt terrible then, knowing that he was soon to make her fatherless, and the anguish was apparent later, when he lost his appetite after having successfully killed the target at last. There was a scene where they found out that she was still in the house, and had picked up the call that was meant for her father. They attempted to delay the assassination until she was safely out. But was indeed a very sad scene, for the viewer knew what will soon come to past.

There were many scenes of brutality, but also many scenes of tenderness. Avner's love for his family saved him from becoming a victim of another assassin masquerading as a prowling man-trapper. I saw him cried as he spoke to his little daughter on the phone, and I wondered how he felt then about the men he had been assigned to destroy, the men who were also husbands and fathers. Towards the end of the film, the audience is shown how much toll such a life had had on him, renderind him paranoid and giving him the equivalent of a post traumatic stress disorder. From the time he decided to undertake the mission, his life changed, and would never be the same. But he began then to open his eyes to the futility of brutality as it begets more brutality (something that we get to see through the news that came on a few times in the movie). His previous unquestioning loyalty towards his homeland took a turn when he realised how much of a pawn he was to his country's politics. The movie succeeded in portraying the weaknesses and cruelties of both sides, as well as the humanity that exists in each individual person. Unfortunately, since the focus of the movie was on the Israeli, we did not get to see really what goes on in the minds of individual Palestinians and Arabs, but from the short exchanges of dialogues, and from the various scenes, we get a notion that they too have a heart. We are reminded of the fates of the refugees after the Palestinians were rendered stateless, and it is clear that the movie aspires to tell both sides of the stories as well as it could. We also get to see the kind of impression PLO had on the world back then, and how easily they were confused with HAMAS (maybe because of the ties to both organisations by certain individuals).

Hence, I think it is shallow prejudice that kept Munich from being screened in Malaysia. Anti-semitism, unfortunately, is still pretty high in this country, and that had kept many worthy movies from being shown. We are in some ways worse than terorrists who had become such due to their despair, because we are blindly prejudiced in our complacency, only because it is easier to be prejudiced along with the majority rather than to question it. I suspect that V For Vendetta was allowed to be screened because it had been categorised as some movie version of comics, despite its obvious political content and unrelenting criticism of establishments. V, the man who is liberator of the masses, as had been said in other reviews, is also highly individual, in that he has tastes that could not be considered "popular", with the exception maybe of the jukebox. He does remind me of Eric in the novel Phantom of the Opera, though perhaps a more highminded version?

Both movies were about fighting for freedom. One involving only one country, whereas the other involved a country that had become the source of wars between two factions. I daresay that the two movies would be interesting to explore what is means to be a terrorist, and the "black September", September 1972 and September 2001.

And if you need a refresher course on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, do check out here