In yesterday’s post, in an attempt to analogize Tea Partiers with demagogues, I included an excerpt from Aristophanes‘ The Knights. Once I had posted a link to the post on Facebook, I made the following note in the comments space–directing it at a pair of friends of mine who work in Brooklyn College’s Classics department:Continue reading “Reflections on Translations-VII: Capturing Class Distinctions”
Tag Archives: translation
Reflections on Translations – V: The Special Challenges of Poetry
I have previously confessed, on this blog, to being mystified by the magical processes of translation, especially when I realize important components of my literary and philosophical education consisted of reading translated works. This mystification is especially pronounced when I confront translations of poetry, where the translator’s task appears ever more difficult. When I readContinue reading “Reflections on Translations – V: The Special Challenges of Poetry”
The Walking Dead and the Puzzle of Cinematic Adaptations
In my recent post on The Walking Dead—in comparing the comic book series to the AMC television series–I said that I found the comic book more complex, more brutal, truer to the darkness of a post-apocalyptic world ruled by the dead and diseased. In saying this, it seemed to me that the filmmakers would haveContinue reading “The Walking Dead and the Puzzle of Cinematic Adaptations”
Reflections on Translations – IV: Embedded, Untranslated Text, and Tintin
Louis Mackay has an interesting article at the London Review of Books Blog (‘Tintin in China’, 11 June 2012) , which continues an examination–commenced by Christopher Taylor (LRB, 7 June 2012)–of the Chinese artist Zhang Congren’s influence on Tintin‘s creator Hergé. (In particular his influence on one of Hergé’s earliest Tintin adventures, The Blue Lotus.) Zhang influencedContinue reading “Reflections on Translations – IV: Embedded, Untranslated Text, and Tintin”
Reflections on Translations – III: The Pleasures of Iranian and German Movies
I like many products of contemporary Iranian cinema: for instance, the movies of Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Majid Majidi–to name only three of a long and distinguished line-up of directors. Theirs is a neorealism with a compellingly different grammar from that of other products of the genre. There is another, not-so-overt reason for theContinue reading “Reflections on Translations – III: The Pleasures of Iranian and German Movies”
Reflections on Translation – I: Accepting and Assessing Translations
Like any reader with a sufficiently long career, I have read many works in translation. In doing so, I have been aware of the distance between the author and myself, of being subject to the same constraints as any other reader of translated works is. Still, I have never ceased to be surprised when IContinue reading “Reflections on Translation – I: Accepting and Assessing Translations”
Samir Chopra 