Χαμένη στη μετάφραση

Ποιος καλός άνθρωπος θα μου τα μεταφράσει το αργότερο μέχρι την Παρασκευή που τα θέλω; Χωρίς διλήμματα και επιπλοκές, να μου στείλει μια ωραία λογοτεχνική μετάφραση. Εεεε και θέλω γλώσσα λογοτεχνίας, όχι γλώσσα μετάφρασης, αυτή την κάνω και μόνη μου, χεχε… Τεσπά το έχω ρίξει στο διάβασμα στο παραπέντε για να δω  πως στο καλό  γίνεται η καλή λογοτεχνική μετάφραση. Μάλλον δεν θα πάρω διπλωματική πάνω στη μετάφραση αν και ποτέ δεν ξέρεις μπορεί να αλλάξω γνώμη μέχρι το τέλος, έτσι όπως κάνω πάνταααα….

Μετάφραση Πεζογραφίας

Αποσπάσματα Λογοτεχνικών Κειμένων

The Oregon Trail

            A low undulating line of sandhills bounded the horizon before us. That day we rode ten consecutive hours, and it was dusk before we entered the hollows and gorges of these gloomy little hills. At length we gained the summit, and the long expected valley of the Platte lay before us. We all drew rein, and gathered on the top of the hill, sat joyfully looking down upon the prospect. Right welcome was it; strange too, and striking to the imagination, and yet it had not one picturesque or beautiful feature; nor had it any of the features of grandeur, other than its vast extent, its solitude, and its virgin wildness. For mile after mile, a plain as level as a frozen lake, was outspread beneath us.

A Spot of Bother

            I looked ahead, where Emma should be, but did not see her. I called her name. I pushed my hands in front of me, aware even as I did so of the absurdity of this gesture, as if a pair of hands could part the fog. The panic did not strike immediately. No, that would take several seconds, a full minute even. At first it was only a gradual slipping, a sense of vertigo, like the feeling I used to get as a child when I would stand knee- deep in the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, close my eyes against the white- hot Alabama sun. I yelled Emma's name more loudly, feeling sand beneath my feet, its shifting, unreliable shape. I ran forward, then back, retracing my steps.  Up ahead, more fog, a half mile or so of beach, then the hill leading to the Cliff House, the Musee Mechanique, the Camera Obscura, the ruins of the Sutro Baths, Louis' Diner. To the right, there was the concrete walkway stretching along the beach, then the big parking lot that fed onto the highway, and beyond it, Golden Gate Park. Behind me, miles of beach. To my left, the Pacific Ocean, gray and frothing.

Mark Haddon

The Man Who Married Himself

‘Why not’?

With those words, my good friend Reverend Zatarga changed the course of my life.  When he said them to me, he had spent two hours on the telephone with Bishop Fleming discussing various sections of the Bible in excruciatingly fine detail.  He pointed out that Levicitus warns Christians not to marry their sister, aunt, mother, mother-in law, daughter or even their granddaughter (should they be tempted).  But nowhere in the good book is there a rule against marrying oneself.  So when I told Reverend Zatarga that was exactly what I wanted to do, he eventually conceded with those two fateful words:

‘Why not?”

Personal Decisions by William Wuyme

Serve The People! by Yan Lianke

The Division Commander gazed solemnly at Wu Dawang as the latter laid the sign on the table. 'Do you know what this sign means?' he asked.  After a long, hard look, Wu Dawang produced a careful critique. 'Good,' declared the Commander, his face brightening slowly into a smile. 'Very good, in fact - much better than them.' Though Wu Dawang didn't know who the Division Commander meant by 'them', he did know, and better than most, the People's Liberation Army's three rules of thumb - Don't Say What You Shouldn't Say, Don't Ask What You Shouldn't Ask, Don't Do What You Shouldn't Do.

Yan Lianke

Arthur Conan Doyle- Sherlock Holmes

The wind was howling outside, and the rain was beating and splashing against the windows.  Suddenly, amidst all the hubbub of the gale, there burst forth the wild scream of a terrified woman.  I knew that it was my sister’s voice.  I sprang from my bed, wrapped a shawl around me, and rushed into the corridor.  As I opened my door I seemed to hear a low whistle, such as my sister described, and a few moments later a clanging sound, as if a mass of metal had fallen. 

Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Μετάφραση Ποίησης

A Question - a poem by Robert Frost

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

William Shakespeare
XVIII (Sonnet 18)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnet 43

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sigh

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun abd candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

-

Μετάφραση Θεατρικού έργου

Harold Pinter

Last to Go

A coffee stall.  A barman and an old newspaper seller.  The barman leans on his couner, the old man stands with tea. Silence.

MAN: You was a bit busier earlier.

BARMAN: Ah.

MAN: Round about ten.

BARMAN: Ten, was it?

MAN: About then.

Pause.

MAN: I passed by here about then.

BARMAN: Oh yes?

MAN: I notived you were doing a bit of trade.

Pause.

BARMAN: Yes, trade was very brisk here about ten.

MAN: Yes, I noticed.

Pause.

MAN: I sold my last one about then.  Yes.  About nine forty-five.

BARMAN: Sold your last then, did you?

MAN: Yes, my last “Evening News” it was.  Went about twenty to ten.

Pause.

BARMAN: ‘Evening News’, was it?

MAN: Yes.

Pause.

MAN: Sometimes it’s the Star, it’s the last to go.

BARMAN: Ah.

MAN: Or the…whatsisname.

BARMAN: ‘Standard’.

MAN: Yes.

Pause.

MAN: All I had left tonight was the ‘Evening News’.

Pause.

BARMAN: Then that went, did it?

MAN: Yes.

Pause.

MAN: Like a shot.

Pause.

BARMAN: You didn’t have any left, eh?

MAN: No.  Not after I sold that one.

Pause.

BARMAN: It was after that you must have come by here then, as it?

MAN: Yes, I come by here after that, see, after I packed up.

BARMAN: You didn’t stop here though, did you?

MAN: When?

BARMAN: I mean, you didn’t stop here and have a cup of tea then, did you?

MAN: What, about ten?

BARMAN: Yes.

MAN: No, I went up to Victoria.

Pause.

BARMAN: Yes, trade was very brisk here about then.

Pause.

MAN: I went to see if I could get hold of George.

BARMAN: Who?

MAN: George.

Pause.

BARMAN: George who?

MAN: George…whatshisname.

BARMAN: Oh.

Pause.

BARMAN: Did you get hold of him?

MAN: No.  No, I couldn’t get hold of him.  I couldn’t locate him.

BARMAN: He’s not about much now, is he?

Pause.

MAN: When did you last see him then?

BARMAN: Oh, I haven’t seen him for years.

MAN: No, nor me.

Pause.

BARMAN: Used to suffer very bad from arthritis.

MAN: Arthritis?

BARMAN: Yes.

MAN: He never suffered from arthritis.

BARMAN: Suffered very bad.

Pause.

MAN: Not when I knew him.

Pause.

BARMAN: I think he must have lft the area.

Pause.

MAN: Yes, it was the ‘Evening News’ was the last to go tonight.

BARMAN: Not always the last though, is it, though?

MAN: No.  Oh no.  I mean sometimes it’s the ‘News’.  Other times it’s one of the others.  No way of telling beforehand.  Until you’ve got your last one left, of course.  Then you can tell which one it’s going to be.

BARMAN: Yes.

Pause.

MAN: Oh yes.

Pause.

MAN: I think he must have left the area.