MOUSE OR RAT?

What Hacker News says

1. aardvark179May 2016
   I would also recommend Eco's own Mouse or Rat: Translation As Negotiation.
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2. schlagetownNov 2015
   Watchmen (Alan Moore)

   Origins of Form (Christopher Williams)

   Starship & The Canoe (Kenneth Brower)

   The Size of Lumber (Nicholson Baker)

   Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Shunryu Suzuki)

   Deschooling Society (Ivan Illich)

   Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

   Bolo'Bolo (P.M.)

   Le Ton beau de Marot (Douglas Hofstadter)

   Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (James Lovelock)

   Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation (Umberto Eco)

   Neuromancer (William Gibson)

   The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham)

   Don Quixote (Miguel Cervantes)

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3. marsupialJun 2025
   Interest. I log in after a while and read post. Asimov is amusing to some but few would call literature. That is fine! I enjoy pop filler.

   I like cute anecdote, it has certain use, against purple prose. It is a tool, not a Foundation.

   The point "say simply" is in short essays DFW, George Orwell politics and the English language, Schopenhauer, however, they do not simply speak simply.

   > So a novel is not literature unless it uses your preferred writing style?

   I think your error is extreme literal mind. The plot goes in math function and we solve murder mystery by weighing objects on scales and deducing. Certain are meant to be read in such way, and others not. Literature is not.

   Above quote is excellent display as it tries say "your definition of literature is idiosyncratic, you are a dictator of definitions" with big L Liberal towards taste. Who's to say smash piano with hammer not better than Chopin, former is postmodern preference there are no elites here.

   > That passage doesn't introduce any "characters". Perhaps Lord Chancellor will turn out to be one of the novel's characters, but that remains to be seen.

   Lord Chancellor is already character because he exists as a person in story? Regardless, we can speak about characters without their names, even without speaking, that is what I mean.

   I have anecdote Umberto Eco Mouse or Rat to match re literal

   "In his notes to a recent Italian translation of Moby Dick the translator, Bernardo Draghi, spends three pages apropos the famous opening line, Call me Ishmael. Previous Italian translators put, quite literally, Chiamatemi Ismaele. Draghi remarks that the original opening line suggests at least three readings: (i) ‘My real name is not Ishmael, but please call me so, and try to guess what my choice means (think of the fate of Ishmael son of Abraham and Agar)’; (ii) ‘My name is not important, I am only a witness of a great tragedy’; (iii) ‘Let us be on first-name terms, take me as a friend, trust my report.’"

   "Now, let us assume that Melville really wanted to suggest one or more of those readings, and that there was a reason why he did not write My name is Ishmael (which in Italian would be, literally, ‘Mi chiamo Ismaele’). Draghi’s translation reads Diciamo che mi chiamo Ismaele, which could be roughly translated as Let us say that my name is Ishmael. Even though I appreciate the rest of this translation, I cannot but object that (apart from the fact that the Italian version is less concise than the original), with his choice Draghi has inevitably stressed interpretations (i) and (ii), but has eliminated the third one. If Melville wanted to remain ambiguous – Draghi eliminates part of the ambiguity."

   How would Hemingway introduce as Ishmael? Call me Ishmael.

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4. bodhiMay 2014
   > The ideal is to write what the original author would have written, if they were writing fluently in the target language. [...] If a pun doesn't work in the target language, a fluent writer would have used a different pun, but how do you know which?

   Umberto Eco, in Mouse Or Rat?[1], describes two different approaches to translation, (I'm paraphrasing here) source vs. target. Your example is a good one, but it actually only touches on grammatical differences. There are cultural differences too.

   For example, if I'm translating a cricket (the sport)-themed story from Australian English into Japanese, do I retain the cricket references, and have the meaning be unintelligible to Japanese readers with no knowledge of cricket? This is what Eco refers to as source translation, which is closer to a literal translation.

   Or I could change the cricket references to baseball, which is more appropriate in a Japanese context, and Eco refers to as target translation. The purpose here is to convey the feeling, more than remaining true to the literal meaning of the original text.

   [1]: http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Mouse_Or_Rat.html?id=...

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