I have created a new blog entitled Stealing Speech: A Commentary on the Long History of Publishers’ Attempts to Restrict Free Speech.
I’ll do some cross-posts, most of which will be quite relevant to TeleRead. David Rothman’s vision of well-stocked national digital libraries would obviously have come true by now in the absence of copyright.
But what is the connection between copyright and the translation issue mentioned in the headline here? Copyright reduces the number of translations available—and the pleasures available to readers. The case history below shows what’s at stake here.
Why the nuances of the Verne novel matter
When the remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth came out, I thought I should go to the trouble of reading the book—I saw the older movie a long time ago and therefore am familiar with the story.
Jules Verne is without a doubt an interesting author. He was one of the founders of western science fiction and a singularly imaginative person. His books have enough suspense and unexpected, even miraculous, events that should entertain all but the most die-hard action junkies. If that were not enough, his books are also an excellent source of information about how the world appeared through the eyes of a 19th Century western scientist.
Hollywood rarely, if ever, depicts faithfully an author’s original story, so reading the book would also give me the only complete picture of this seminal bedrock of modern culture. I could not read the original, though, because I do not read French. Thereupon I turned my search to Project Gutenberg to find the English translation of this famous work. This would be the closest I could get to the original without years of study in a language for which I have no interest.
The Gutenberg surprise
This is where Project Gutenberg surprised me.
There was not one translation of the work—there were two! Project Gutenberg frequently has multiple editions or scans of works with cosmetic differences. But multiple translations of the same work? And these two translations had separate titles: A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and A Journey to the Interior of the Earth.
Same character, different name in different translation
At first, I thought I should choose one, so I decided to read the first chapter or two of each and discover which I liked best. I quickly noticed quite a great deal of discrepancy between the two. In fact, it existed to a shocking degree. Even the narrator’s uncle, second only to the narrator in importance, had two different names. He was Professor Hardwigg in one and Professor Lidenbrock in the other. One would think a central character of a narrative would have only one, easily copiable, name in the original work (it is not as if the book were written in a non-Latin character set).
This massive gulf, not merely the result of simple word choices, led me to become hooked on both versions. I was captured by a new form of suspense: How well did each author appear to translate the story, and which did I think was the more faithful translation (I had no idea, of course, but speculation is always fun. I began to read both books concurrently, reading a chapter of one and then the other—trying my best to keep them matched up (the translators even separated the chapters in different places).
One of my most enjoyable literary experiences
The resulting adventure has been one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had with literature, and it taught me not a little about the art of translation and its power to alter the ideas in a work. There is no longer a doubt in my mind that a translation is an original work, a shadow approximating the shape of the original but powerless to represent the fine, multitudinous details of the irradiated body. Each translator had distinct styles, and I continually had to assess which version seemed more faithful. I have read other translations of Verne’s works, so I already had an impression of his “voice,” but this gave me two versions of each statement to analyze. It was an expedition every bit as trying as the story itself. I quite thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.
Yet, alas, I am unlikely to have this experience again. One might ask why, of course, but the answer should already be completely obvious. I, true to form as always, must blame this (correctly, I should add) upon the crooked shoulders of that rancid body of law called copyright.
The Berne complications
In any country that falls under the influence of the Berne Convention—and that is most these days with specters like WIPO around to make all of our lives miserable and dark—translations are now firmly within the bounds of “derivative works”. This means translations can be controlled by the author of the original story. Very few, if any, authors are going to “authorize” multiple translations of their works. The financial incentives are against it, and even if they were not, the author of the first translation, who is certain to be in a financial relationship with the author or his publisher, will resist losing his monopoly to any sort of competition (it is that nasty Free Market the publishers hate again).
There will be no alternate translations. One might go to the time and effort to translate a work free of charge, but who would do so in order to get sued? Who would pay the author for the privilege? This rules out wiki style translations as well.
Public Domain not burdened
For Public Domain works, this is not the case. The Dao De Jing may have been translated more than 100 times into English. Nearly all the Greek classics have been translated into English. There are probably endless examples of ancient works with multiple translations. Copyright has virtually eliminated this for new works, however, and Disney and its cabal of wicked publishers and their lobbyists are close to damming up the remaining trickle into the Public Domain. Great works of the last 50 years have official translations and nothing else. Opinions on what an author might have meant are limited to one per work, one interpretation, one point of view. This is truly a great loss.
This inhibits cross-cultural understanding, deprives students of valuable information, and constrains the growth and depth of world culture. By making “derivative works” into extensions of a copyright holder’s privilege over information, the authors of the Berne Convention have taken something from everybody, and every legal system and law maker that endorses this theft of speech, this censorship of potential ideas is culpable.
Wanted: No need for translators to ask permission
I honestly hope that someday, I can live in a world where speech is free, and no one has to ask the author of a work before providing the service of translation to everybody. I want everybody to be able to have the kind of experience I am enjoying so thoroughly. The words in books, the speech recorded, should be free of restrictions, charge being only one, for everybody to use and learn from and—very significantly—add to.
When speaking to friends and relatives, no one thinks of putting a price on their speech or restricting who repeated it. In fact, most people feel rather proud when their statements are repeated by others—especially others who they esteem. But when the same speech is recorded, the game suddenly changes. Speech suddenly gets hijacked into the realm of personal property. Many people would claim to “own” their speech even after they have sold it to others.
Copyright, therefore, has become a from of privatized censorship, a system by which Free Speech is limited without the government taking responsibility.
A free speech issue
I believe that this is not only immoral, but criminal. Free Speech is the foundation of Freedom and Free Societies. Free Speech in western culture has been under constant assault since the Constitution of the United States so completely altered it and toppled the majority of European monarchies. One method of attack has been to restrict speech not by censorship, but by ownership. Tying speech to monetary value restricts the dissemination of ideas and places the power of information distribution in the hands of wealthy parties.
Because of this, I am going to entitle this collection of my essays Stealing Speech: A Commentary on the Long History of Publishers’ Attempts to Restrict Free Speech. I sincerely wish that everyone who happens upon it is entertained as well as enlightened (it is also my sincere wish that I actually have something enlightening to say, and if you are reading this I hope you will regularly contribute your opinions.
The opinions of the TeleRead community are, of course, even more welcome as you all have a vested interest in the subject and are affected daily by the things I am posting about. For those of the TeleRead crowd who are mobile device junkies, this essay was composed on a Sharp Zaurus C700, and spell checked and posted from an XO. If only I had access to more books on those devices…
Moderator’s note: A fascinating post for many in the TeleBlog audience! Meanwhile I have done a very quick edit. I’ve tweaked the title, added photos and subheads, and made stylistic and format changes and organizational ones. Here’s yet one more illustration of the complexities of presenting text properly, whether in books or on the Web! Minus my editing, a similar essay from LuYu is here.- DR
I apologize for the long post with no summary. I assumed the server would automagically limit the front page posting to two or three paragraphs. I guess I was wrong. How is that done?
When those translations were made they were probably paying Verne royalties, but back then the stadard procedure wasnt to ask permision and sign extensive deals but simply to hand over a certain percentage of your revenue back to the author once you started to sell your translation, this is the real problem whith the way copyright is used today. It’s not just about the cash but also the control of future cashflow.
Authors deserves to be payed when someone makes money off thair work no doubt about it but they dont have the right to control how their works are used once it’s made public and today copyright grants them that right.
Hi, LuYu. Many thanks for your essay on the translation issue. I don’t agree with everything in the post but emphatically believe that consumers benefit from different translations. I wish publishers of still-copyrighted works would be more flexible, although I can also understand the desire of writers for first-rate translations. The issue isn’t just money.
Just so people are clear, I personally support copyright but believe the present system is harmful both to consumers and content providers of all sizes. Under the TeleRead plan, there would be provisions for fair compensation of copyright holders.
On another topic, LuYu, please don’t worry about the long entry on the home page. Repairable! I’ll fix it for you right now. The page break icon is the fourth or so from the right on the top row in this WordPress screen shot.
I encourage all TeleBlog contributors to ask questions as you did, if they can’t find the information at wordpress.org. We need to be more and more of a multiuser site, and that means making people feel at home when they write for us.
Thanks again.
David
LuYu, if you had not no interest for French, you could have read in the latest volume of the letters of our last genius why Guy Debord cared so much how his books were translated: they were complex, rich, subtle, incredibly intelligent, full of not so obvious references to the works of other geniuses…and many sentences had multiple meanings. He did not want people in other countries to read misleading translations:the fact is many pirate translations were so horrible as to be traitorous to his ideas. So he tested translators with a few pages, and if one passed the test, he then received very precise instructions, and then exchanged letters with him about many passages of the book.
And he needed the money of the foreign editions to be able to spend his life thinking and writing. Copyright was invented by geniuses/great thinkers/great writers to allow them to have the freedom to live an independent intellectual life, not to depend on the aristocracy/bourgeoisie or slaves/wage workers.
Your essay is wrong because you are not a genius, and totally fail to take into account the superiority of geniuses, the superiority of their rights and the importance of their freedom.
Who cares about the copyright on the works of Disney/Bono/most of what is in sale today in bookstores? I do not. Why? Read Schoepenhauer’s “Ueber Lesung” (from Parerga und Paralipomena) if you want to see things from the point of view of a genius!
The translation can definitely make or break a book. Many years ago there was a long discussion on usenet about Stanislaw Lem. It was pretty generally agreed that many of the books, such as The Cyberiad, were outstanding, and the others were ho hum at best, as if there were really two different authors. Someone finally pointed out that all of the ‘good’ ones were translated by Michael Kandel, the ‘bad’ ones by an assortment of other translators–and some of them had even gone through French before they finally made it into English. The poster assured us that in the original Polish, they’re -all- great. One of the differences between Kandel and the other translators is that he explicitly doesn’t do a literal translation. Especially for the Cyberiad, which is all puns and word games, it’s not even possible to do a literal translation that holds together. But all of Lem’s books rely on language nuances, and unless the translator is more than average agile in both languages, with a good feel for the intent of the original phrasing, the sparkle gets lost and you end up with a dry gist of the original.
Unfortunately for those of us who would really love to enjoy -all- of Lem’s work in faithful translations, it doesn’t seem likely to happen in our lifetime.
Just to say that Verne’s French is pretty easy to get through and even one’s own bad reading of the original text is worth three times as much as any translation (which in eBooks you can keep lurking to check any difficult passages..)
Copyright is a commercial invention for commercial reasons. Any payment to ‘Geniuses’ is incidental and is circumvented by publishers in a million ways.. Read up the History of Richard Berry & his song “Louie Louie.”
Cheers
Allyn mentions Michael Kandel who created the English version of the Polish novel “The Cyberiad” by the renowned science fiction author Stanislaw Lem. I particularly remember one humorous passage in Kandel’s translation. The novel contains a robotic poet that is given the following extraordinary task.
“Have it compose a poem — a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism and in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!”
The robotic bard of Michael Kandel (translating Lem) constructs the following poem:
To understand the poem it helps to know the biblical story of Samson who was a legendary warrior and strongman. Samson’s enemies induce his lover Delilah to discover the secret of his strength. Samson confides in Delilah that he will lose his strength if his hair is cut.
Delilah orders her servant to cut his hair while he sleeps, and Samson’s enemies capture him and enslave him. They blind him by holding a hot poker near his eyes. In vengeance he kills himself and many of his enemies by pushing out the pillars of a temple and causing it to collapse.
I have never seen the original Polish, and I do not know if the directive “every letter beginning with the letter s” was present. That type of constraint would make a translation quite thorny. (If this sounds familiar it might be because I commented about this poem two years ago here.)