IF THIS BE MAGIC: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, what a pleasure of a read

IF THIS BE MAGIC: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation
DANIEL HAHN
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: How does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word is changed? In this playful, meditative exploration of translating the world’s most beloved playwright, Daniel Hahn guides us through the magic of bringing the Bard to a global audience.

Shakespeare may have breathed the air of sixteenth-century England, but today, all the world is his stage. Every year, millions of people, from Bogotá to Borneo, read Hamlet for the first time, thanks to the tireless work of translators. Drawing on the work of the very best of them, Hahn dives into the infinitesimally complicated ways the great playwright is reinvented and yet sounds, somehow, like himself—in Chinese, Dutch, Turkish, and more than a hundred other languages.

From word order, puns, and punctuation to metaphor, accent, and song, Shakespeare’s variety of genius presents an endless set of conundrums, among them: How does Romeo and Juliet’s love story unfold if their dialogue cannot form a sonnet (nor rhyme), as it does in the original? How can you form wordplay around the letter “I” and its sound if its meanings are not shared in other languages? These are just two out of millions of issues facing translators tasked with bringing Shakespeare to non-English languages, non-Shakespearean eras and cultures. To attempt such a feat, they must cut and add beats, maintain rhymes, adapt names and locations, and preserve meaning while not unilaterally prioritizing it, all while knowing that for each word, line, or scene they construct, another option is yet to be discovered.

Traveling the world, Hahn speaks to writers and actors engaging with Shakespeare’s work, sharing stories of his own. Hahn, whose great-grandfather produced one of Brazil’s earliest Shakespeare translations, emerges as a wise and enthusiastic guide, teacher, and sleuth. If This Be Magic does not require knowledge of any other language or more than a passing acquaintance with the Bard’s canon, but it draws out fascinating insights on both. As nerdy as they come (there is a chapter on commas), supremely readable, and funny throughout, this is a book for everyone and a fitting tribute to the Globe’s Bard.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Translating words between languages, even ones that swim in the same linguistic rivers and in generally the same direction, is an exacting, laborious practice of alchemy. It recombines elements of the original material at specific temperatures (states of emotion) and adds/subtracts new substances (words in the translator's own language) and anneals the result in the great body of water that is the translation's target culture. What shape the new thing has, what its properties are, is now set and there for everyone to see.

Does it still resemble the original ideas put forth by William Shakespeare? Can it? Every word is new. Every sound is not early-modern English. But it's meant to be a work by Shakespeare available to someone from a culture the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon would not remotely recognize. Is it Shakespeare?

I was fascinated by the idea of this effort to contextualize the art of translation by viewing it through this very specific lens. A translator takes on a huge task every time they opt to make another artist's work over into words the original artist does not know. The decisions, the word-by-word consideration of connotations, denotations, cultural nuance, generational nuance...and that's just the words themselves, not the way these basic units of meaning interact with the plot, lead to possible subtexts that aren't in the original but certainly work in the gestalt of the particular story....

Why would you choose to do that work, let alone do it for a writer of international superstardom and with legions of self-appointed guardians of His Sacred Words/Ideas/Intentions? And then there's the small matter of how incredibly linguistically inventive, how unnervingly acutely emotionally observant the writer was...how to make that available in a tongue like German that's close to our English let alone, say Swahili?

I read this collection of case files Author Hahn, with his ancestral connection to a Shakespeare translator, created for us, in one sitting. It was a long day, interrupted for water coming in and going out and two sandwiches. It's not necessary to do that. It's not even particularly advisable as I came away with a distinctly overloaded spirit trying too hard to consolidate my feelings into my insights to be anything but restless for hours while trying to get to sleep. I dreamed of reading "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and its transformations, its miscommunications, its shape-shifting between farcical comedy and subtle elucidation of desire compressed into a sentence that seems to be more about etiquette violated than courtly power flouted...in Croatian (in the dream I understood it but in life not at all). It was still Shakespeare, only not in English that honestly needs footnotes and a glossary for my midcentury American brain to get the whole of it.

And then there's the end use of the translation. Sure, some will simply read it as texts, able to easily stop to find a dictionary, to indulge the idle whim of looking up a play's local-culture history. But lots more people will hear this translation enacted into a play. An actor, professional or amateur, will speak the translator's/Shakespeare's words. If you don't already know how very very different spoken words are from those marks on a page, read this sentence aloud. Does it still feel the same, is it easier to understand, harder to understand, are the words themselves familiar or weird, do you know from the look of the sentence how to say it out loud....

All these details are part of the art that a translator signs up to give their audience. It is even more difficult than writing one's own work! I kept wanting to know why these underpaid geniuses undertook such an immense task, knowing success will be not receiving death threats from Shakespeare stans. I don't really feel I got a satisfying answer though, most people just seem to think "well of course I'm going to climb Everest in these Jimmy Choos while wearing a ballgown from Gone with the Wind and carrying these kettlebells. Cat fur to make kitten britches!" So no full-five from me, but close, because the topic of translation is oddly greatly broadened by Author Hahn considering so deeply the ramifications of this extremely specific use of it. I might not feel I know why but I sure as hell know what the point of this labor is.

Spread the love. Share the joy. Commit to the communication of Art to everyone you can reach.

Author Hahn, I totally, bone deep, relate.

August is #WITMonth: Women in Translation will feature all August long

August is W.I.T. Month!

This ten-year-old readfest is described on their website (linked above) as follows:
WITMonth—aka Women in Translation Month—is an annual celebration of women writers from around the world, writing in languages other than English. Started by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, WITMonth has grown to become a staple of the online literary community, as well as a prominent presence in independent bookstores around the world.

Every August, readers from all continents around the world (except Antarctica, but we’ll get those penguins yet!) gather in spirit (and sometimes in person) to read, review, and discuss works by women writers in translation. The idea is to spread the word about the Women in Translation project at large, and promote individual women writers in translation specifically. Follow #WITMonth on Twitter, Instagram, Booktube, and across the world!

The overarching purpose is one I support most of all because it is the opposite of the TERF essentialist and exclusionary mindset. A bit of history about their work, again from their website...

The #womenintranslation project is:

International, intersectional, and built around the notion that all women* (*and transgender and nonbinary and intersex individuals) deserve to have their voices heard. This project is committed to giving space to women* from all countries, all languages, all religions, all ethnicities, all cultures, all sexualities, all marginalized gender identities, all abilities, all bodies, all classes, and all ages.

Due to the stunning gender disparity in non-English language literature, this project will focus on all literature written by women* in any language other than English, regardless of the language in which it is read or discussed. This project shall not discriminate based on literary genre or designation, seeking instead to open as many gates as possible to all readers. This project is open to all readers, from all languages, from all countries, in the hopes that together we may build a better world.

This month I will focus on works written and/or translated into English by *women. My intention is to post twenty-one reviews, not including Burgoines and Pearl-Rules, in the thirty-one days of August. See the previous years' reviews, too.

I encourage all who love reading to join the fun...one book or ten, add some women's writing and translating to your TBR!
***
August is #WITMonth in Review

I wrote twenty-four reviews, Burgoines, and Pearl-Rules in August. I'd planned to make twenty-one full blog posts of #WITMonth reads, and failed, making thirteen full-blown reviews. My excuse is what my LT friend Katie calls "The Rona" bashed me for several days...though that might be a self-misdiagnosis. The pharmacist who shot me up with my vaccines yesterday said the profile I described sounded more like the onset and course of RSV.

Anyway, I'm all jabbed up and really don't want any re/visits from anything, thenkewveddymahch.

My favorite read of the month was, hands down, Hum by Helen Phillips. Excellent, thought-provoking story of how humans will always screw up inhuman systems because what programmers call "edge cases" actually make up the bulk of human life. I was gripped, beginning to end.

The most enjoyed #WITMonth read was the estimable Of Saints and Miracles, translated ably from its Spanish edition by Claire Wadie. I absolutely rang like a newly-founded bell with its story of betrayal for gain. Not the cheeriest story, permaybehaps, but one I think we can all feel in our water.

September will be themeless as I ramp up for #Deathtober and #Booksgiving. It's all the more urgent to me that I not die before those themes are polished and properly posted because my notes say some pretty scathing things and need toning down for public consumption.

Guess what? There's MORE! I write for The Coil, and at Medium, too

I wonder...does everyone, or anyone, who reads the blog know that The Coil also publishes pieces I write?
5 Novels to be Thankful Came Out in 2016
5 Novels by 21st Century Warriors
5 Alternate History Novels About American Politics
5 Novels About Immigrants and Immigration
The Coil is a webzine that treads the lightly beaten path of independent literature. It's curated by the unbelievably busy Leah Angstman of Alternating Current, which is also a micropublisher of outstanding books. I don't think the woman sleeps.

My piece on publishers in the Mittelstand. This is an area I'm very passionate about. I think this is the place where the best work in publishing is, and always has been, done. That's a German economic concept, one that we here in the USA have ignored. It's quite probable that this neglect has caused a great deal of the economic distress that we're in.

Wikipedia provides this list of core Mittelstand values:
Family ownership or family-like corporate culture
Generational continuity
Long-term focus
Independence
Nimbleness
Emotional attachment
Investment into the workforce
Flexibility
Lean hierarchies
Innovativeness
Customer focus
Social responsibility
Strong regional ties
Can anyone argue with these values as models for any company to emulate? The immense size of the US small business sector makes it a primary driver of consumer spending, aka the bulk of economic activity. Publishing's Mittelstand has given us the careers of Hemingway and Faulkner, among others. The modern independent publishing scene is more urgent than ever. In an emerging authoritarian regime, the big publishers can be very easily compelled to sing Horst Wessel because they have so much to lose and are famously un-nimble. With the advent of print-on-demand technology and e-books everywhere there is a screen, nimble and determined indies can evade all but the most determined government harassment. (Like Sander Hicks went through when he published James Hatfield's Fortunate Son, which horrendous governmental abuse of power is detailed in Horns and Halos.)

I've published two profiles of publishers I regard as exemplars of some of these admirable, almost Utopian, industrial values. Outpost19, a California-based emerging publisher of fiction and non-fiction that's outside the business model of the media conglomerate dominated publishers. I've reviewed Hope for a Cool Pillow in that profile.

I've also profiled Phoneme Media, whose novel BAHO! is the first Burundian novel to be published in the USA. My review is posted here. The publisher is a deeply creative soul, David Shook; his and his partner's outstanding aesthetic eye is evident in each and every thing that Phoneme does.

My next profile will be of my long-standing favorite publisher of gorgeous books, Chin Music Press.

It must be a decade now that I've read and reveled in their deluxe output. As objects, the books are uniformly handsome to gorgeous; as entertaining reads, they're uniformly excellent. So stay tuned...January brings a special treat of Seattle-y goodness.

MY FIRST MURDER, a Finnish Scandicrime Procedural...An Umlautfest!

MY FIRST MURDER (Detective Maria Kallio #1)
LEENA LEHTOLAINEN (tr. Owen Witesman)
AmazonCrossing
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Maria Kallio has just been assigned her first murder investigation. To prove to herself and her squad that she has what it takes to be a detective, she’ll have to solve the death of Tommi Peltonen. Found floating facedown at the water’s edge of his Helsinki villa, Tommi had invited his choir group to spend a weekend at his retreat. But beneath the choir’s seemingly tight-knit bonds seethed bitter passion and jealousy. As Maria sets out to determine the difference between friends and foes, she uncovers the victim’s unsavory past—and motives for all seven suspects. Now it’s up to her to untangle a complex set of clues before the killer strikes again.

The first book in Leena Lehtolainen’s bestselling Finnish crime series starring Detective Maria Kallio, My First Murder offers hard-boiled realism from a female perspective.

My Review: I gave in and read a Scandicrime book. It's a serviceable police procedural told in first person by thirtyish Maria Kallio, law student and relentlessly single female interloper in the world of career police detectives. She appears as a replacement for a broken-down cop who injured himself in the line of duty, and she rapidly worked her way up the chain of command because 1) she's a girl and b) she's tough as nails.

Now, as to the mystery part, I liked it fine but didn't love it. Some interesting characters were adequately developed. What made my eyebrows rise was the reportedness of the atmosphere in which Maria works. She tells us a wee bit, basically a log-line, about the other crimes she and her department are pursuing; not enough to make us care, more than enough to make us curious, and just enough to bring the sense of urgency about the main case of this book to a halt. Can't put this down to first-book-itis, either, since this author had her first book published when she was twelve!

So what was I left with? A sea of Finnish names, all of which look wrong to me, and locations I know nothing whatsoever about, and a sense of being slightly seasick as Tommi and Tomppa and Tiina and Tiiu and Riku and Antti all blended into a mass of UUUUUIIIIUUYYPPPPAAAA. Finnish, when spoken, raises my hackles with its sheer alienness. When written, it causes me distress because it's got nowhere for me to grab hold of anything to give it meaning to me. Plus everything seems to wear umlauts, those freaky-deaky fangmarks that make all previously comprehensible sounds turn into strangled moans.

It's free to borrow on your Kindle, and that's what I'd recommend you do. At $4.99, it's not a break-the-bank download, but see if you can hang with the sheer Finnishness before committing actual funds to it.