Does anyone use a Kindle?

Alright I misinterpreted and you're right. From what I gather from reading Nabokov's original critique is that when you say Anna Karenina you have to say "Mr. Karenina" in English to maintain the connection for an English speaker who doesn't automatically equate Karenin to Karenina. He says that using "Mr. Karenina" is "about as ridiculous as calling Lady Mary's husband Lord Mary." Why this is true and the reverse isn't is better left to someone who speaks the language.
 
It's also interesting to note that whenever I post more than a few times in a winedisorder thread I can look at my blog stats and find out how many people have tried to figure out who I am from the google searches.
 
Everybody needs to remember that the issue is one of providing good translation, not accurate transcription. The goal of literary translation, I take it to be, to provide both the meaning and effect of a work in English. This means that when the work uses marked language (or literary language, use your preferred term) you want, per impossibile, to provide both meaning and analgous effect in English. It also means, when the language is not marked, the English version will also not be marked. In various limit cases, this can mean sentences that are untranslateable to their full extent. I once saw a French translation of Moby Dick that translated the first sentence as Je m'appelle Ishmael. This is more or less a literal translation but since the phrase in French renders as "my name is Ishmael," it destroys the point of the sentence, which is that his name isn't Ishmael, he's saying that you can call him that. On the other hand (and Sharon should correct me here)the obvious alternatives don't really work well. "Appelez-moi Ishmael" is really quite unidiomatic and could be taken to mean: "give me a call, Ishmael." Je me nomme Ishmael might be better but it can still be used to mean "my name is Ishmael." And my French isn't good enough to provide a better choice. So I suspect the translator just shrugged and figured that the novel itself would finally provide the information, which it does. And if that sentence is difficult, how does one translate the first sentence of Combray: "Longtemps, je me suis couch de bonne heure" in which the use of the pass compos in a sentence that calls for the imperfect is quite pointed when English marks more variously and much less pointedly the difference between the past and the imperfect so that "For a long time, I went to bed early" doesn't even sound particularly different in meaning from "For a long time, I used to go to be early." I know that Moncrieff, surprisingly, chooses the second version, but even if some later translator corrects him to the first--or has done so--he won't get the effect he's looking for.

Now with regard to Karenin vs. Karenina, the argument of Nabokov (and Constance Garnett and Rosemary Edmunds) is that the feminization of proper names provides information in Russian that English provides with titles and that retaining an unEnglish feminized name only confuses the issue (either forcing different last names for married characters or in Nabokov's comic version the necessity of Mr. Karenina). Although it isn't true that titles function precisely as feminized endings, and a slight semantic element is lost, much more is lost by incorrectly trying to provide that element when it won't survive the translation into English. It should be said that this remains a minority position with regard to the title, based on the position that Karenina is now so normalized for this novel that translating as Karenin now calls attention to itself in ways that are more damaging than disputing the original translation choice. I take this to have been Sharon's position in her earlier disputing of my choice. It's a tenable one; it may ultimately be the right one given Otto's response to my original post. but it's a recognition of a situation, not a false attempt to provide absolute rules of translation. Otto's original response to me is wrong not because (or only because) of the difference between first name and last name (which is a different translation issue: why do we refer to Leo Tolstoy and Eugene Onegin but Fyodor Dostoevsky?) but because his examples are of feminized names in English have nothing to do with a semantic practice and the quesion of how and whether to translate that semantic practice.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
"Appelez-moi Ishmael" is really quite unidiomatic and could be taken to mean: "give me a call, Ishmael."
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Clearly, you haven't read Kathy Acker. (Who famously wrote, pining for a Jewish boy, "Call me, Ishmael.")

It's the same thing in French, and the comma is the tourniquet.

Though one could also say, to be absolutely, screechingly clear, "Vous pouvez m'appeler Ishmal."

Certains m'appelleraient Ishmal.
On m'appellera Ishmal.
Je vous invite m'appeler Ishmal.
Disons que je me nomme Ishmal.
Pour vous, je suis Ishmal.
Vous me reconnatrez sous le nom d'Ishmal.

Etc.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
... Karenina is now so normalized for this novel that translating as Karenin now calls attention to itself in ways that are more damaging than disputing the original translation choice. I take this to have been Sharon's position her earlier disputing of my choice. It's a tenable one; it may ultimately be the right one given Otto's response to my original post.
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Yes.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
"Appelez-moi Ishmael" is really quite unidiomatic and could be taken to mean: "give me a call, Ishmael."
Click to expand...

Clearly, you haven't read Kathy Acker. (Who famously wrote, pining for a Jewish boy, "Call me, Ishmael.")

It's the same thing in French, and the comma is the tourniquet.

Though one could also say, to be absolutely, screechingly clear, "Vous pouvez m'appeler Ishmal."

Certains m'appelleraient Ishmal.
On m'appellera Ishmal.
Je vous invite m'appeler Ishmal.
Disons que je me nomme Ishmal.
Pour vous, je suis Ishmal.
Vous me reconnatrez sous le nom d'Ishmal.

Etc.
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Damn, someone beat me to the joke.

I'm not sure why all your other alternatives don't show up in your original reply. They all get the meaning, of course. But none of them get the tone. As a matter of curiosity, would you choose any of these, or would you go with je m'appelle Ishmael"?
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
How do they not get the tone? I think the "On m'appellera Ishmal" gets it, fairly.
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The sentence is famous because it's short, terse, seemingly unamibiguous and yet not self-evident in meaning. High school English teachers no doubt still have to laboriously explain to students that it has as one element of its meaning that his name isn't Ishmael. And, I could also say "call me Jonathan" in response to someone who insisted on addressing me as Professor Loesberg, so it's not a given that he's giving you a sobriquet. It matters that the narrator is being ambiguous, while seeming to be direct, practically a description of his narrator.

I'll accept that On m'appellera Ishmael (how do you get that diaresis?) does all that. My French isn't perhaps up to seeing it. But I would read it more or less to say, let's agree to call me Ishmael, which isn't quite the same. My original point though is that you can't get that sentence whole into French. If I'm wrong, which is more than likely, we could still find other examples.
 
No, it's a kind of indirect imperative. Along the lines of "I am to be called Ishmael," or, well, "Call me Ishmael."

It is also terse yet slightly pontificating.
 
how do you get that diaresis?
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On a Windows box, hold down Alt, type 0235, release Alt. Classic Windows user-unfriendliness. Macs have a different approach, but I no longer remember what it is.
 
Or just copy and paste from Word or an internet search for words including the character you need. That's what I usually do.
 
originally posted by BJ:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
1) I meant to say, or ought to have said, that CDs provided better quality sound than vinyl for those who don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on stereo reproduction and don't care that the vinyl degrades quickly under normal use--in other words me and non-nerds like me. I am a lover of classical music but not an audiophile. I, of course, have heard the arguments for the ultimate superiority of vinyl and I have no refutation to make to those arguments except that, given my equipment, I don't experience that ultimate superiority, so it's a hypothetical point for me.
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Right now you can buy a brand new English made Rega P1 turntable for $395 which will crush any CD player you can buy for an equivalent price. You can play your old beautiful Deutsche Gramophones and Archiv Produktions and it will work with any decent stereo. Audiophile does not have to mean hundreds of thousands!
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Any scientific data that the human ear can detect the differences?

I am in no sense an audiophile, so this is simple curiosity.

I understand that the Cory/Guillaume/Dagan/Luc set like the look and feel of it (shit, I love my old jazz & Prince (!) on vinyl), but that is not really about sound but about mood.

BTW, one of my resolutions for the new year is to listen to more music and especially see more live (I just stopped and haven't re-started).

Also, I no longer really read fiction. Maybe it was all the reading in graduate school or somewhere along the way, but I seem incapable of really reading fiction the last few years. It's sort of depressing, but I just can't shake it. Fucking education has ruined my life.
 
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