Why fantasy writers should read old books

[Demesnedenoir]

It amazes me how well someone like William Weaver did with Eco's Name of the Rose translation.

Writing this as someone who is fluent in several languages, despite my dyslexia. People talk about translations, but the best translations are much more than that, they are interpretations. I've been closely involved in the ongoing translation of my books from Swedish to English, and I can say that it is only when you do this that you begin to understand how closely related culture and language are. There's no way of conveying the nuances of a story without doing a proper interpretation which takes into account both the language, the story itself (including any underlying messages and themes) and the culture of the country for which you are translating the story. Google Translate just doesn't cut it, and even professional tools like Babylon can't do it all. The more I've been involved the more I have appreciated the great skill involved in such interpretations. Wonderful popular examples of this are in the various translations of the Asterix albums, as a comparison between the French and English versions shows quite clearly.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yes, it was Tuscan. Back in the day, I knew a couple of people who at least claimed to be able to read the original, LOL.

I reckon you would have had to learn Tuscan, as Dante lived well before a unified Italian language emerged. I find the idea of you learning Italian only to discover the original texts still were a pain to read rather amusing. Though I might be off myself. Modern Italian might be sufficient for reading Dante, as the latter informed the former... Less funny.

 

[Finchbearer]

I reckon you would have had to learn Tuscan, as Dante lived well before a unified Italian language emerged. I find the idea of you learning Italian only to discover the original texts still were a pain to read rather amusing. Though I might be off myself. Modern Italian might be sufficient for reading Dante, as the latter informed the former... Less funny.

I only learned that different Italian ‘dialects’ are in fact totally different languages, and that there is a formal Italian. I learned this from a translated fictional book written by a Neapolitan author!

 

[Ban]

And they are far from alone on the continent, though more extensive due to the recency of their nation formation. The difference between a language and a dialect is entirely political. So many ostensible "dialects" across Europe are in truth barely intelligible for those speaking the standardized language.

I only learned that different Italian ‘dialects’ are in fact totally different languages, and that there is a formal Italian. I learned this from a translated fictional book written by a Neapolitan author!

 

[pmmg]

I'm mildly disappointed that no-one has explained to me what a brave clock with bullets is. Heheh.

Perhaps something like this. Given to Police Officers for their bravery, or at retirement

 

[Finchbearer]

And they are far from alone on the continent, though more extensive due to the recency of their nation formation. The difference between a language and a dialect is entirely political. So many ostensible "dialects" across Europe are in truth barely intelligible for those speaking the standardized language.

In the books I read they were called ‘dialects’, and I found that interesting. It was also interesting how political it got in terms of the working classes being marginalised for not speaking formal Italian. The books are set in the 1950’s-1960’s.

 

[Ban]

In the books I read they were called ‘dialects’, and I found that interesting. It was also interesting how political it got in terms of the working classes being marginalised for not speaking formal Italian. The books are set in the 1950’s-1960’s.

That's the recognisable playbook. A central regime declares one local instance of a language continuum the "official" language and then retroactively relegates the rest to the status of "dialect" and proclaims the speakers of such as "uneducated", instead of using their own supposed education to realise that the languages they decry have just as much right to be as the one they have arbitrarily placed above it.

I have opinions on this to say the least, but I shouldn't rant too long.

 

[Jackarandajam]

That's the recognisable playbook. A central regime declares one local instance of a language continuum the "official" language and then retroactively relegates the rest to the status of "dialect" and proclaims the speakers of such as "uneducated", instead of using their own supposed education to realise that the languages they decry have just as much right to be as the one they have arbitrarily placed above it.

I have opinions on this to say the least, but I shouldn't rant too long.

You mean like y'all and a southern accent being inherently ignorant, or Idris Elba being turned down as 007 because he's "too cockney," Or, or...

 

[Ban]

You mean like y'all and a southern accent being inherently ignorant, or Idris Elba being turned down as 007 because he's "too cockney," Or, or...

That's in the same vein, but imagine if you take it a step further. Imagine your southerners instead had been speaking their own Germanic language that is just as old as the rest of American English, but not mutually intelligible. It would be downright silly to belittle their language while being unable to converse in it, yet that is what has happened here. Luckily, regional languages increasingly have legal status (in the 90s via the Council of Europe and since then more and more on the EU and national levels). Some now undergo language revivals and positive reappraisal of their social status.

 

[Karlin]

An interesting diversion into the merits of learning a foreign language, but for clarity, I guess what I was saying is that most of us aren't bilingual in ancient languages, which means we are dependent on the translations of others. Given that comes with all the usual caveats of time, distance, culture, gender, philosophy and culture, I am more inclined to rely on an expert with years of training in using historical resources to interpret all of that stuff for me. Any good history book will draw on the original sources, and often provide translations as part of the text. BUT the key thing you get with a history book, that you don't with translated texts, is lots of context and explanation to make it easier for the lay person to understand.

I work full time, I have a 5 year old and a husband, and two elderly parents. I'm all for research, but my time is short, and I'd rather spend it writing. If I can draw on the amazing resource of someone who has spent years at university studying the subject matter, and also the years after figuring out how to interpret it in the best way, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to sweat about the original sources. I'm a fantasy fiction writer, not a Roman Historian.

HOWEVER, if I had time, space (i.e. not a 5 yr old jumping over me as I write) and the intellect, I would plunge myself into different languages and histories, because they are basically the original stories of humanity, and that's what we're all interested in

I don't quite follow. Here's why:
I've read The Journey to the West (Ming Dynasty gods and demons novel) twice . I'm reading it a third time. I'm reading an edition that is edited by a professor at the U of Chicago, with a long introduction and extensive footnotes. I'm aware that I am seeing it through his eyes, but his eyes are pretty good, and it's either that or not see it at all. I am reading a translation by "an expert with years of training in using historical resources to interpret all of that stuff for me. " So I don't follow why you seem negative about reading such things in translation.

If I write about Michelangelo, I intend on reading his own poems, in translation, with all the difficulties involved. How could I not?

 

[MasterofRevels]

So many responses since I last logged in! Let me see how much I can respond to lol

I see your point, but unless you're going to invest the time into learning ancient Chinese, old English or ancient Greek, going back to the source material will be a fruitless endeavour. And if you're reading it in English, it's someone else's translation, with their own interpretation of history, philosophy and hegemonic thinking woven into the text from whichever era and location they were writing it from. We can't take our own heads off when we translate, so culture and social mores inevitably seep in.

Even reading something like the Canterbury Tales (which is pretty readable in its original as its quite close to modern English) still presents challenges of interpretation with some words and phrases that don't directly carry over. So again, unless you're going to become a philologist of middle English, maybe it isn't that helpful to go back to the original source. Even with something a couple of hundred years later, like the Diary of Samuel Pepys, can throw up odd things (what, for example, does "...meeting with Mr Henson, who formally had the brave clock that went with bullets." actually mean?!).

I do totally agree with your general point around reading widely to inform your work. I guess I'm lazy, and I'd rather find some really good historians (Mary Beard, David Starkey, David Olusoga) to do the hard work for me!

All that said, one of the reasons why the stories and archetypes in Lord of the Rings feels so familiar and resonant to some of us, is because Tolkien was a philologist of ancient English and could feed all of that knowledge about our ancient history and mythology into his story-telling. So if you do have a planet-sized brain like him, and you are able to read the originals - more power to you, and I'm sure you will be a more convincing story-teller for it.

I guess I'm agreeing disagreeably!

I agree with your point that we're never actually engaging with an old text exactly as the people who formed the original audience would have. Even if you're not reading in translation, there's the whole issue of editions: which manuscripts are given priority over others, whether the editors change what seem to be scribal errors or leave them as is, etc. I studied Old and Middle English in university, and even though I studied texts in the original language, I was still seeing them through a modern editorial filter.

I don't think this is a big deal for the purposes of writing fantasy (or historical fiction), unless you're approaching your worldbuilding like a philologist. Obviously, a familiarity with ancient Greek, or Latin, or Aramaic, or what have you, would only bring you closer to that old culture, but I think you can get a good sense of values and attitudes even with translated work. For just one example, I don't read Old French, but I remember reading The Song of Roland for the first time and being struck by how different its picture of heroic masculinity was to what I expected from medieval knights. For those who haven't read it, there's a lot of crying. Now, a recent history book could've told me that knights in medieval literature are emotional and cry freely and I could have potentially incorporated that detail into my own writing. But there's something different about actually seeing it for yourself. It's sort of like watching documentaries about a foreign country versus actually visiting it for yourself. As a tourist, especially one who doesn't speak the language, you're not really experiencing life as the locals do, but being there does help you imagine what that experience is like.

 

[MasterofRevels]

In the books I read they were called ‘dialects’, and I found that interesting. It was also interesting how political it got in terms of the working classes being marginalised for not speaking formal Italian. The books are set in the 1950’s-1960’s.

I find this subject fascinating too. My grandparents immigrated to Canada from Calabria and they spoke the local language/dialect rather than formal Italian based on Tuscan. All the regional dialects existed more or less equally until the unification of Italy in the late 19th century at which point suddenly people were "wrong" for speaking as they'd always done.

The same thing happened in other countries like England too of course, but much earlier historically.

 

[Aldarion]

It is also interesting to note how much some languages do or do not evolve. For example, Bašćan Table (Bašćanska ploča), a major Croatian historical monument from cca 1100 AD, is still fully intelligible to anyone conversational in standardized Croatian language, if a bit weird-sounding. By contrast, anyone trying to read the original Beowulf basically needs to learn Ye Olde Englishe as it is a completely different language from modern-day English.

 

[Finchbearer]

By contrast, anyone trying to read the original Beowulf basically needs to learn Ye Olde Englishe as it is a completely different language from modern-day English.

Croat is a Slavic language isn’t it?

If you were to read Anglo Saxon poetry side by side with the translations, you can see some recognisable words, and I’m not a linguist. There are many modern English words that haven’t changed much from Old English, such as winter, gold, wolf, hound, wine, mother, father, we, you and many more. I can follow some sentences, and sometimes it really feels as though I can understand it because it’s so strangely familiar, and others are harder and I would need the translation.

There are also some quite specific words that I doubt get used in other English speaking countries such as bairn, which is the northern English and Scottish word for child, which derives from Old English word bearn.

Place names such as wold and garth derive from Old Norse and Anglo Saxon, and describe the type of land, wold meaning open uncultivated pasture, which is why we have the Cotwolds and the Yorkshire Wolds. Garth means enclosed pasture, like grazing ground.

If you listen to Beowulf for example, to me it also sounds like English, just a gobbledegook version. You can really see the correlation.

 

[Aldarion]

Croat is a Slavic language isn’t it?

It is. But that doesn't mean I can understand Russian, or Polish. Few words here and there maybe, but that's it.

If you were to read Anglo Saxon poetry side by side with the translations, you can see some recognisable words, and I’m not a linguist. There are many modern English words that haven’t changed much from Old English, such as winter, gold, wolf, hound, wine, mother, father, we, you and many more. I can follow some sentences, and sometimes it really feels as though I can understand it because it’s so strangely familiar, and others are harder and I would need the translation.

There are also some quite specific words that I doubt get used in other English speaking countries such as bairn, which is the northern English and Scottish word for child, which derives from Old English word bearn.

Place names such as wold and garth derive from Old Norse and Anglo Saxon, and describe the type of land, wold meaning open uncultivated pasture, which is why we have the Cotwolds and the Yorkshire Wolds. Garth means enclosed pasture, like grazing ground.

If you listen to Beowulf for example, to me it also sounds like English, just a gobbledegook version. You can really see the correlation.

"Few recognisable words" is quite different from "being legible on first reading and with no assistance". Yes, you can see familial resemblance once you have the original Beowulf text and modern translation side to side. It may even sound like English - I don't know, I have never heard it. But I at least was not able to fully understand the original text of Beowulf without assistance of translation.

 

[Finchbearer]

It is. But that doesn't mean I can understand Russian, or Polish. Few words here and there maybe, but that's it.

I wasn’t suggesting you could therefore understand Russian or Polish. I was just interested to know.

I was just responding to you saying that Old English is a ‘completely different language’ - I was just trying to illustrate how it’s not completely different, but very similar, and I am not a linguist at all. You do need a translation, but there are a lot of individual words that can be understood on their own.