The Nellie, a small sailboat
No.
No no no no no.
SparkNotes, which is one of those embarrassing American things that help people pass English tests by translating literature into the vocabulary of Sports Illustrated – SparkNotes, I say, has translated Heart of Darkness that way, and they should be arrested. Perhaps flogged. I don’t approve of flogging, but I might have to make an exception.
Behold.
Conrad:
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
Sparky:
The Nellie, a small sailboat, was anchored in the river. There was no wind and the only thing to do was sit and wait for the tide to change before heading down the river and out to sea.
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT?
Look. Here’s the thing. Conrad wasn’t just sharing some facts. He wasn’t just telling a quick story before the brandy and cigars. The language he used is what he was doing. The language matters. That abortion up there is like drawing some stick figures with labels under them and saying there’s Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride or Gaugin’s Nave Nave Moe.
Don’t translate Conrad into Sports Illustrated. Just don’t do it.
Lol. Yes, it’s rather missing the point isn’t it? Poor old Joseph, he just didn’t know how to tell his story clearly.
I confess, for some things, like The Odyssey for example, I like to have both the more literal translations, and a dumbed down more plain English translation. By reading the more accessible version first, my comprehension of the more literal version is increased.
Fortunately, Conrad’s prose is sufficiently clear I can do without SparkNotes. :-)
Yes, even with my prosaic lecture notes on Biology, I get constantly harangued to “bring it down” to the student’s level. To which I must answer, what are they, 3? When I have to define even common one syllable words? I’ve always felt it was better to be a bit above the student’s level and pull them up.
I was first presented with challenging literature at the ripe old age of 8, when I read through everything in my age group in our tiny school library, and worked my way up to Jane Austen and the Brontes. It wasn’t easy, but with a dictionary, I was able to work my way through the challenges, and I have never regretted it. I still hate turgid prose, but a well turned phrase sets my heart singing. My husband and I often share such snippets as we’re reading together right before we go to sleep. The English language can be beautiful in the hands of such a master as Conrad.
Thanks for that, Ophelia. At last, a former English teacher, I can see a post-retirement career opening.
“Everyone knows a rich dude needs a wife…”
“The old man hadn’t caught a fish for a long time…”
I think I’ve got the talent.
In Writing As A Second Language, Donald Davis’ starting point is the inadequacy–the poverty–of language instruction in schools. He explains that for the most part, all schools require of students is to know the plot of a book, and if that is the only requirement, then reading the Spark Notes is an entirely serviceable alternative to reading the book.
This fills me with unspeakable, unfathomable fury.
What Mr FancyPants said (in translation):
I am totally pissed off.
I’m ashamed to confess that never before have I seen such wonders. Sure, our lazy students got plot summaries available, but a translation? Verily, some genius must have been at work.
Steven:
But if knowing the plot is the only requirement, just read the summary! It’s shorter. It takes less time to absorb. Seriously, I could write down a perfectly readable and serviceable summary of “Heart of Darkness” no more than 1 page long. (I said I could, ok? I didn’t say that I would do it for free!) Who the hell needs a longer dumbing-down translation? What’s the intended audience, I wonder?
Incidentally, I’m curious what else apart from knowing the plot should be treated (in your opinion) as a requirement for the students. E.g. understanding the artistic value sounds nice, but how to change it into a *requirement*?
My own school memories make me very skeptical in this respect. On one occasion, we were analyzing a mediaeval Polish poem. The literary value of the poem – that was the main topic, not only explicitly stated but even written down on the blackboard. In order to appreciate it, we composed the list of all the adjectives and verbs used by the anonymous poet, together with their contemporary translations (not a dumbing-down translation, mind you. The point was rather that mediaeval Polish was incomprehensible to even the brightest among us.) Finally the teacher said something like “Just look how many of them there are!” I guess that at this point the literary value of the poem should become visible and obvious to everybody. Instead, I remember all of this as a wonderful exercise in futility and school boredom.
—————
I tried to post this some time ago but the B&W site was not functioning. In the meantime I consulted the world leading expert on such matters, i.e. my daughter. “Good idea”, she exclaimed. “These books are often so horribly boring!” She also totally dismissed my silly remarks (see above) about the summaries: “After reading a summary, you often know too little about the characters because you don’t pay that much attention to them. Later the teacher asks detailed questions and you are not able to answer”.
Sorry, but Rome has spoken and now I must quickly recant before the torture begins. So … well done, SparkNotes!
[Side remark: I wonder only how to make my recantation progressive instead of cowardly. Hmm … would the hashtag “#EndSchoolOpression” be enough to achieve this worthy goal?
Fortunately, at the moment the Inquisition is very busy elsewhere: a couple of weeks ago she discovered Israel and Palestine. Lord have mercy.]
Another brick in the wall, by Who?
Never heard of.
“And if you say Dylan, he thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas. Whoever he was. The man ain’t got no culture. But it’s alright!”
I’ve been Paul Simon’d and Art Garfunkel’d. I just discovered somebody tapped my phone!
Yes, this is a reaction to the way these works are turned into part of a school curriculum. I’ve never seen the reason for appreciation and analysis of particular works of art being a fundamental part of high school education. Art is nice, yes, and I can get behind “leaving nice things nice”, and “being exposed to nice things”. But when I went through high school, literary analysis was a core subject to be learned. The attempts to combine it with teaching language and communication skills didn’t seem to work well. I guess it’s inertia.
Ariel – my sympathies. I don’t know what happened, but somehow my son fell in love with language. He might see a book as boring, but he didn’t want it “translated” for him. He would work through it, and often find new words that he would then use (appropriately, but often inconveniently, if you know what I mean).
He is a bit older than your daughter, but is still on the cusp of the Millennial generation. He was not encouraged in school, because they were too busy finding ways to “engage” student’s with literature, often by teaching only Judy Blume and other contemporaries. They didn’t even try Conrad or other literary giants. My son grabbed those types of books out of my library and devoured them, just as I did when I was young and devouring my dad’s library.
Literature is, and should be, about a lot more than plot. But it isn’t just the schools. I have belonged to various writing groups, and they all seem to be in agreement – short words, short sentences, short paragraphs, and absolutely no difficult phrases. The strange thing is, they all love my writing, and I break all those rules. So my conclusion is that people are writing things they themselves don’t necessarily want to read, but assume their readers are less smart than they are, and less interested in language.
There’s another point, the ‘translation’ is actually deficient in the amount of information it contains and is also inaccurate in relation to the original.
Definitely. Part of their idea of “translation” is, clearly, to drop all non-essential information. There are some Victorian windbags for whom that may be an improvement, but H of D doesn’t need boiling down, not even for students.
@12 Ophelia,
For people like me who ‘messed about in boats’ when they were younger, Conrad’s writing is particularly evocative.
SparkNotes, unfortunately, will probably be very popular with the Wiki generation of students, who wants to waste time reading all those book thingies, when there’s an easily readable ‘translation’ or a one page summary available.
They could always just read Arthur Ransome.
As long as they read the original as well as the translation, I am all for it.
I’ll tell you why. There are kids in high school who have parents who barely speak any English and are doing pretty good to work out the meaning of a new, individual word from context in a straightforward modern sentence. We ask them to not only read, but interpret abolitionist poetry written in an unfamiliar style, in 18th century imagery and language. I have to break down each stanza for them, act out the story that it tells, etc, to get them past the incredibly confusing language that highly literate people have to think about and see the big picture meaning so that they can write an essay about the rhetorical strategy the poet uses. To them, it’s as if The Jabberwocky isn’t a nonsense poem, but one that has a meaning that a few people consider quite obvious and clear and they are supposed to parse out the ecosystem of the jabberwock and write about the relationship of the slithy toves to the jabberwock’s main prey species.
Now, either the kids who simply can’t make sense of Conrad’s original writing and just give up and don’t do the assignment without help fail, get individual tutors to read it with them and explain it, or they get a simplified text to refer to when the sentences are too complex and unfamiliar, so that they know what is actually the takeaway story and can work out the theme themselves. I think the last option is best.
Claire@6: I both love and hate you for that. And I’m laughing. (So probably more leaning towards the love side.)
In reply to Samantha Vimes:
Original: “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
Update: “And this also,” said Marlow out of nowhere, “has been one of the darkest places of the earth.”
Is “suddenly” somehow opaque? And why the substitution of the superlative “darkest” for the descriptive “dark”? Do the editors think that without things being the “darkest” or the “greatest” etc., nobody will pay attention?
I’ve been thinking about that “darkest”. I think the use of the superlative defeats a point that Conrad was at pains to (tried hard to ;) ) make. “Darkest” weakens the metaphor, tying it to a physical place rather than allowing the evocation more universal possibilities for locating darkness. “Darkest” also invites us to engage in comparisons where Conrad was seeking to name something both specific and universal.
Thank you Ms. Vimes for doing what you do. If you’d have your students read both “translation” and original, you’d probably accomplish even more than you would be in teaching the original alone, even with exegesis. You’d have the chance to explain why the language is important, more important than the “facts” in telling the story and giving the story more power than just the plot; to move the emotions as much as tickle the narrative itch.
This is true. My older colleague, friend and mentor once explained to us young ones he was teaching some editing that; “I love you”, unqualified, is so much more powerful than “I love you very much”.
And English wasn’t Conrad’s first language, I think. Skills can be learned, but it takes work.