A Note on Reading and Writing in Translation

In general, as anyone who has worked to acquire a non-native language knows, stylistic analyses are most trustworthy when they needn't rely on the skills of a translator. My German, for example, is rudimentary at best, yet I use many of Kafka's works in my on-campus Fantasy course. His style seems to me a crucial revelation of an essential ambiguity he sees in the world. I have, therefore, labored to read parts of his work with great care in German and double-checked my analyses with native speakers of German in order to make sure that my understanding of the works from English translation are valid and that my teaching therefore is legitimate. (So far, so good!)

In this online course, I will, on a few occasions, be offering close analysis. When I do, I will either read in English the material in question in the video clip or make a copy of the language visually available online. Either way, I imagine that someone with a reasonable fluency in English will be able to follow along and judge for herself the validity of my discussion. One also can always use the Pause and Rewind controls in order to review sections of the clips. So, in general, using the English texts for this course is not absolutely essential.

On the other hand, it is sometimes desirable. For example, in Dracula, Stoker differentiates several of his characters by writing their speech in dialect and one of those dialects is so far from Standard English that even some of the other characters have trouble understanding him. I have no idea if the translations of this novel are good but I do know that the sense of linguistic variation is a fundamental part of Stoker's style, something to appreciate, consider, and, I hope, enjoy regardless of whether or not I discuss that feature at length.

In addition, for some books, as I say in the opening "Before You Read" clip for any relevant unit, the edition makes a difference. Wells revised "In the Country of the Blind" over thirty years after its original publication. The world-famous story that has been so widely embraced is the original version, not the one with the changed ending that he provided nearing the ending of his own life. I cannot, I'm sorry to say, report whether any given translation in any given language is of the right edition. To discover that, you must compare the edition I've indicated with the translation you have found.

All of this, then, seems to me to suggest that if you are comfortable enough in English to readily follow the video clips, you should read the books as you would wish, in English or in another language, but be alert to the possibility that sometimes you may want to double-check your or my understanding against the original and certainly you'll want to make sure that any translation you may use is genuinely trustworthy.

In addition to reading in English, this course asks you to write in English. Some of us are not native speakers of English. Some of us are not native speakers of English and so will find this more difficult than will some others. Of course, even among native speakers of English, writing skills will vary. Since we are not segmenting our group on the basis of demonstrated skills in English, we must treat all participants evenhandedly. But, of course, sometimes it is obvious that a misstatement comes from a problem with writing rather than reading skill. So, in this course, we ask that when you read essays or forum entries by those who are clearly working in an incompletely mastered second language, you be understanding of their efforts as you judge their success with English. However, regardless of their apparent background, once you think you understand what they have written, give it the same careful scrutiny and respectful response that you would to work that seemed to come from a native speaker of English. There is nothing about working with colleagues that forbids understanding their situation and there is nothing about their situation that warrants less than your honest, thoughtful, and probing response.