Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Today I got the new translation of Heidegger's Shadow (Feinmann's La Sombra de Heidegger, not David Cherrill and Carroll Jacobs's play) and immediately started comparing it to my The Shadow of Heidegger.
First thing I noticed is that it's not as literal a translation. I tried to keep or express as much of the style, voice, and cadence of the original in my English. The original is written by an Argentinian in Spanish, who is writing in the persona of a student of Heidegger's at Freiburg. Feinmann imitates the style of European novelists and philosophers of the time, filtered through Hollywood movie scenes from the 1960s-70s. This new translation is in idiomatic American English, which makes it breezy to read, but loses some of what I found interesting and entertaining in the original. This translation is more of an adaptation for a different audience. It's not as long as the original; entire sentences were dropped. There's a four page translators' introduction. I was surprised that a university press edition didn't do more to provide context to story elements that readers won't recognize in a few decades. Unlike Feinmann's generation's shared Hollywood culture, amongst millennials, only film obsessives will recognize borrowings from Cabaret and Judgement at Nuremberg. My translation includes movie stills, pictures of historical characters, etc. Of course, being free, my translation didn't need to license anything.
¶ 9:20 PM
First thing I noticed is that it's not as literal a translation. I tried to keep or express as much of the style, voice, and cadence of the original in my English. The original is written by an Argentinian in Spanish, who is writing in the persona of a student of Heidegger's at Freiburg. Feinmann imitates the style of European novelists and philosophers of the time, filtered through Hollywood movie scenes from the 1960s-70s. This new translation is in idiomatic American English, which makes it breezy to read, but loses some of what I found interesting and entertaining in the original. This translation is more of an adaptation for a different audience. It's not as long as the original; entire sentences were dropped. There's a four page translators' introduction. I was surprised that a university press edition didn't do more to provide context to story elements that readers won't recognize in a few decades. Unlike Feinmann's generation's shared Hollywood culture, amongst millennials, only film obsessives will recognize borrowings from Cabaret and Judgement at Nuremberg. My translation includes movie stills, pictures of historical characters, etc. Of course, being free, my translation didn't need to license anything.
¶ 9:20 PM
