(moved here)
last nite we had a presentation on "Mozart's Letters"...
personally i think it's quite hard... not only 'coz the so-called English original is already a Translated Text... but also the languages Mozart used and the word-play he had... it might be easier to translate from German (and also some Italian and French as i know... ) to English but it would be totally different if putting it in the Chinese context.
one excerpt my classmate showed is as follows:
"So if you want to send a reply to me from that town of Augsburg yonder, you see, then write at once, the sooner the better, so that I may be sure to receive your letter, or else if I'm gone I'll have the bad luck, instead of a letter to get some muck. Muck! -Muck! - Ah, muck! Oh, sweet word! Muck! Chuck! That too 'is fine. Muck, chuck!-muck!-suck-oh, charmante! muck, suck! That's what I like! Muck, chuck and suck! Chuck muck and suck muck"
Attention was paid to the three words: muck, chuck and suck...
The Chinese version reads: 糞蛆、垃圾、污泥... which was criticized as almost 'total failure'... first of all... the rhyme's lost... the meaning's not the same... and so and so... but this raised another question... does the English convey the original German meaning? or the English itself already altered "something" to make the... say... rhyme and filthy context vivid in English? Prof. Tung said we had no way to check the German and to compare it... and since German and English are from the same root... the words, she supposed, the choice of English words... such as the rhyme and the meanings should be able to reflect the German 'spirit'... but it wouold be too difficult for translating them into Chinese... can's note: Total Agree! Prof. Tung added that the Chinese translation itself did not seem right... though they're all talking about dirty things but the degree or nature of that dirty things may not be comparable... and this differs from the English version...
As I'm too interested in this, I checked the German Original!!!! It reads:
wenn sie mir also wolln antworten, aus der stadt Augsburg dorten, so schreiben sie mir baldt, damit ich den brief erhalt, sonst wenn ich etwa schon bin weck, bekomme ich statt eincn brief einen dreck. dreck! - - dreck! - o dreck! - o süsses wort! - dreck! - schmeck! - auch schön! - dreck, schmeck! - dreck! - leck - o charmante! - dreck, leck! - das freüet mich! - dreck, schmeck und leck! - schmeck dreck, und leck dreck!
Brilliant!!!! The three words are: dreck, schmeck, leck... The first and last one are correct but not the middle one.
Dreck, a noun, usu. meaning is mud or muckiness.Leck, a noun, meaning 'leakage' or 'seepage' BUT it is also a slang or colloquial bad language. It acts as a VERB in 'Leck mich am Arsch!' meaning 'Kiss my ass'(or similar meaning). This 'bad' phrase once appeared in Mozart's song and thus I think 'Leck' here should be a verb. That is, personally I think the word 'suck' the translator used is referring to its 'verb' meaning instead of noun, as appears in the Chinese translation.For the middle word, it spells "schmeck" which is wrong. Possible answers may be "schneck", an Austrian langauge meaning slug; or "schmeckt", singular verb form for "to taste" (so far as I know, it is related to food! e.g. The tea tastes good). So I think it is possible that the word 'chuck' the translator used may also refer to the verb form instead of the noun form (as my classmate showed the class).
In fact the last "sentence" gives us clue that schmeck and leck (or chuck and suck) are probably verbs based on basic grammar... if two nouns go together... the first one is describing / giving further explanation to the second one... e.g. Music Class = a class of music... thus the suggestion of "verb forms" follows the context more reasonably than the suggestion of "noun forms" as translated in the Chinese version.This may be another Translation Issue. The German original here only helps us to (maybe) understand more or get a closer meaning to the author. But simply from the English version, we can indeed discover the 'verb' and 'noun' issues especially when having a deeper look at the author or the author's other works (issues like little formal education, rude, relationship with father, family, etc.).The Chinese translation here failed to convey the meaning and taste of the source text not just because the choice of words are awkward as we discussed but the translator also failed to taste the real bit of Mozart.
Try thinking the three words again in "Muck (noun), Chuck (verb! or replace it with the German original [let's take it as 'taste']), Suck (verb!)" and probably you can better understand what Mozart's playing with his cousin, the one whom he might have once felt in love with.
Very nice indeed... naughty but witty...
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