How much Lem is Lem?
Jeremy P Lakatos
Having recently fallen in love with the writing of Stanislaw Lem, what I
wonder is this: how much is him? So much of the fun of his writing is the
play with words, the neologisms, the puns. In English. In their place,
in the original language, was there anything to compare, anything
comparable?
Or should I be in love with the writing of the translators (mostly Michael
Kandel)? Not to say Lem doesn't have some spectacular ideas, but...
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Elisabeth Carey
Jeremy P Lakatos <afn3...@afn.org> wrote in article
<5pf0be$l...@huron.eel.ufl.edu>...
> Having recently fallen in love with the writing of Stanislaw Lem, what I
> wonder is this: how much is him? So much of the fun of his writing is
the
> play with words, the neologisms, the puns. In English. In their place,
> in the original language, was there anything to compare, anything
> comparable?
>
> Or should I be in love with the writing of the translators (mostly
Michael
> Kandel)? Not to say Lem doesn't have some spectacular ideas, but...
This is not exactly first-hand, but - I have spoken with a Polish fan who
was favorably impressed by Kandel's translations, including the renderings
of the puns and neologisms with reasonable equivalents. Obviously many of
the puns are not the _same_ puns, but he said the flavor was similar.
So there you have - one opinion, received second-hand.
Lis Carey
Mike Wasson
Elisabeth Carey <lis....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>This is not exactly first-hand, but - I have spoken with a Polish fan who
>was favorably impressed by Kandel's translations, including the renderings
>of the puns and neologisms with reasonable equivalents. Obviously many of
>the puns are not the _same_ puns, but he said the flavor was similar.
Speaking of Lem ... I seem to remember that Solaris was translated into
English through the French. Is there a better translation available? (I
do know that my edition was *not* translated by Kandel.)
Mike
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Andrew Plotkin
Jeremy P Lakatos (afn3...@afn.org) wrote:
> Having recently fallen in love with the writing of Stanislaw Lem, what I
> wonder is this: how much is him? So much of the fun of his writing is the
> play with words, the neologisms, the puns. In English. In their place,
> in the original language, was there anything to compare, anything
> comparable?
> Or should I be in love with the writing of the translators (mostly Michael
> Kandel)? Not to say Lem doesn't have some spectacular ideas, but...
I was just reading Douglas Hofstadter's latest book, _Le Ton beau de
Marot_, which is about translation. He discusses Lem. The wordplay and
made-up words really *are* all in the original Polish. Kandel has done
an utterly brilliant job of translating -- or making up English
equivalents -- or whatever you choose to call it. You can try to figure
out whether Lem or Kandel has done the more impressive job, but I don't
think it's a soluble problem.
Hofstadter gives an example of a section which he translated on his own,
and then looked at the Kandel equivalent. He prints both. It's the section
about the constructors who build a machine which can build anything that
starts with an "N"...
ObMoreSF: He also discusses _Dragon's Egg_ (Forward's approach to
translating the language of neutron-star inhabitants) and Poul Anderson's
short essay "Uncleftish Beholding."
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Stevens R. Miller
> > Having recently fallen in love with the writing of Stanislaw Lem, what I
> > wonder is this: how much is him?
> > Or should I be in love with the writing of the translators (mostly Michael
> > Kandel)? Not to say Lem doesn't have some spectacular ideas, but...
> Hofstadter gives an example of a section which he translated on his own,
> and then looked at the Kandel equivalent. He prints both. It's the section
> about the constructors who build a machine which can build anything that
> starts with an "N"...
Certainly, one is likely to wonder about this one. The story
turns so finely on this aspect (as do, in similarly ways, most of
the rest of the "Cyberiad" tales), that it is maddening not to be
able to compare it directly to the original.
How does Hofstadter's version compare to Kandel's?
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Russell Asplund
In article <5pf0be$l...@huron.eel.ufl.edu>, afn3...@afn.org (Jeremy P
Lakatos) wrote:
> Having recently fallen in love with the writing of Stanislaw Lem, what I
> wonder is this: how much is him? So much of the fun of his writing is the
> play with words, the neologisms, the puns. In English. In their place,
> in the original language, was there anything to compare, anything
> comparable?
>
> Or should I be in love with the writing of the translators (mostly Michael
> Kandel)? Not to say Lem doesn't have some spectacular ideas, but...
>
I often wondered myself. I would think that it was mostly Lem, since I
really didn't care for Kandel's solo novels, but I've read Lem in other
translations, and they aren't nearly as good. As far as I can tell, it is
just a brilliant match of author and translator.
--
Russell William Asplund
ru...@candesa.com
Michal Jankowski
was...@xanadu.io.com (Mike Wasson) writes:
> Speaking of Lem ... I seem to remember that Solaris was translated
> into English through the French. Is there a better translation
> available? (I do know that my edition was *not* translated by
> Kandel.)
There isn't a better translation. There isn't going to be.
I've read Kandel saying that he tried to obtain the rights to
translate Solaris, but failed.
MJ
Andrew Plotkin
Stevens R. Miller (l...@interport.net) wrote:
> Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> > Hofstadter gives an example of a section which he translated on his own,
> > and then looked at the Kandel equivalent. He prints both. It's the section
> > about the constructors who build a machine which can build anything that
> > starts with an "N"...
> Certainly, one is likely to wonder about this one. The story
> turns so finely on this aspect (as do, in similarly ways, most of
> the rest of the "Cyberiad" tales), that it is maddening not to be
> able to compare it directly to the original.
> How does Hofstadter's version compare to Kandel's?
Quite comparable. They have slightly different styles, of course, and they
chose completely different nonsense words, and different lists of random
"n" words. But one reads as a paraphrase of the other, and I don't have
any great feeling that one is "better".
(Actually, now that I look at that chapter, there's a *third*
translation, done by a Polish grad student that Hofstadter met.)
He describes one knotty issue: at one point Klapaucius tells the machine
to create "nauka", which is "science". Kandel translated this as
"Nature"; Hofstadter used "Nowledge", and tossed in a comment that the
results wasn't very good because the word was missing a "K". The Polish
student used "Science" and made it a machine which coule make anything
beginning with "N" or "S"! Which means that the scene where it refuses to
make "natrium" (sodium) had to change to a refusal to make "stannum"
(tin). This is obviously not a great solution, but "Nature" and
"Nowledge" aren't perfect solutions either.
Note that this particular story, or at least the bits Hofstadter quotes,
*doesn't* contain any of Lem's half-meaningful neologisms -- only real
words and total nonsense. So I can't compare them on that front.
Another note from another book: My copy of the Star Diaries has some of
Lem's illustrations, with hand-written annotations in Polish. So you can
compare just a few of those words to Lem's translations. "Chronocykl" to
"chronocycle", for example, not that that's a hard one. A "Dichotican
Anti-Rumpist" seems to be "Dychtonczyk antyzadysta".
Jan -Besehanic
Jeremy P Lakatos wrote:
> Having recently fallen in love with the writing of Stanislaw Lem, what
> I
> wonder is this: how much is him? So much of the fun of his writing is
> the
> play with words, the neologisms, the puns. In English. In their
> place,
> in the original language, was there anything to compare, anything
> comparable?
>
> Or should I be in love with the writing of the translators (mostly
> Michael
> Kandel)? Not to say Lem doesn't have some spectacular ideas, but...
Probably a combination of both.
Speaking of 'How much Lem is Lem' , I've been reading 'Selected Letters
of PKD'.
Philip K Dick doubted that Stanislaw Lem actually existed and he
expresses it quite brutally.
He thought the entity known as Stanislaw Lem was actually a collective
of socialist science fiction writers who wanted, amongst other things,
to infiltrate the science fiction community and to persuade PKD to
defect to Eastern Europe.
Should PKD be refered to as Philip K Dead or The Artist formerly known
as Dick, btw ?
--
Jan Besehanic email: j...@df.lth.se ja...@lysator.liu.se
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Philip K. Dick.
Jo Walton
> Probably a combination of both.
> Speaking of 'How much Lem is Lem' , I've been reading 'Selected Letters
> of PKD'.
> Philip K Dick doubted that Stanislaw Lem actually existed and he
> expresses it quite brutally.
>
> He thought the entity known as Stanislaw Lem was actually a collective
> of socialist science fiction writers who wanted, amongst other things,
> to infiltrate the science fiction community and to persuade PKD to
> defect to Eastern Europe.
Somebody should write the SF novel where this happens. Dick's novels
do so much to/for American culture, I'd love to see what he'd have
done to/for Soviet. Can someone suggest this to Michael Bishop? Or
Tim Powers? It would be something like :Eye In The Sky: and the Lem
character could be a hand-cranked AI...
--
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Those of you who are very observant might already have noticed my
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David Duffy
Jo Walton (J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: > Probably a combination of both.
: > Speaking of 'How much Lem is Lem' , I've been reading 'Selected Letters
: > of PKD'.
: > Philip K Dick doubted that Stanislaw Lem actually existed and he
: > He thought the entity known as Stanislaw Lem was actually a collective...
: Somebody should write the SF novel where this happens.
: Can someone suggest this to Michael Bishop? Or
: Tim Powers? It would be something like :Eye In The Sky: and the Lem
: character could be a hand-cranked AI...
Which allows one to recycle (is it the intro to the _Star Diaries_?) the
comment that the on-board computer on the LEM was not powerful enough
to have written this work.
Mike Wasson
Michal Jankowski <mic...@fuw.edu.pl> wrote:
>There isn't a better translation [of Solaris]. There isn't going to be.
>
>I've read Kandel saying that he tried to obtain the rights to
>translate Solaris, but failed.
That's a shame. I think it's still my favorite book in the Lem oeuvre.
James Michael Rogers
Jo Walton (J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk) wrote:
In article <33BDA405...@df.lth.se> j...@df.lth.se "Jan -Besehanic"
writes:
> Probably a combination of both.
> Speaking of 'How much Lem is Lem' , I've been reading 'Selected Letters
> of PKD'.
> Philip K Dick doubted that Stanislaw Lem actually existed and he>: > He
thought the entity known as Stanislaw Lem was actually a collective...
I was curious about this, because in Dick's biography it is mentioned
that he corresponded with Lem (or with"Lem"), had some form of royalty
grudge against him, and eventually succesfully lobbied to have him thrown
out of SFWA. Do you think that Dick was sincere in this belief,or was he
simply venting the ol' spleen?
James
Mark-Jason Dominus
In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Hofstadter gives an example of a section which he translated on his own,
>and then looked at the Kandel equivalent. He prints both. It's the section
>about the constructors who build a machine which can build anything that
>starts with an "N"...
Many years ago, I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Kandel, and when I
found out who he was, I asked the questions that had been burning in
my mind for years: Was it still `N' in the original Polish? Or was it
some other letter? And was it originally `Natrium'?
Then he told me, and *!@&*!^@^&*! I forgot.
What's the answer?
--
m...@pobox.com Mark-Jason Dominus
m...@plover.com Plover Systems, Philadelphia, PA
Andrew Plotkin
Mark-Jason Dominus (m...@plover.com) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
> >Hofstadter gives an example of a section which he translated on his own,
> >and then looked at the Kandel equivalent. He prints both. It's the section
> >about the constructors who build a machine which can build anything that
> >starts with an "N"...
> Many years ago, I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Kandel, and when I
> found out who he was, I asked the questions that had been burning in
> my mind for years: Was it still `N' in the original Polish? Or was it
> some other letter? And was it originally `Natrium'?
> Then he told me, and *!@&*!^@^&*! I forgot.
Yes, it was N, and yes, it was Natrium. And the Polish for "nothing" is
"nic". He doesn't say what the Polish for "sodium" is.
Adam Rosenblatt, M.D.
On 04 Jul 1997 14:56:44 +0200, Michal Jankowski <mic...@fuw.edu.pl>
wrote:
>was...@xanadu.io.com (Mike Wasson) writes:
>
>> Speaking of Lem ... I seem to remember that Solaris was translated
>> into English through the French. Is there a better translation
>> available? (I do know that my edition was *not* translated by
>> Kandel.)
>
>There isn't a better translation. There isn't going to be.
>
>I've read Kandel saying that he tried to obtain the rights to
>translate Solaris, but failed.
>
> MJ
That breaks my heart. I've read everything by Lem I could find in
English and Kandel's translations are by far the best. I wonder,
legally speaking what has to happen for someone to have the right to
publish a translation. Who wouldn't sell? Can Solaris be worth that
much in Polish and French? I wonder if Kandel meant that he couldn't
get the project underwritten to make it worth his while, or he
couldn't find a publisher for a new translation? I wonder if Kandel
and Lem have met in person. Perhaps not. Lem as I understand it is
rather solitary and does most of his corrsponding through his literary
agent. It used to say that he lived in cracow on his book jackets,
but now it says he lives in Vienna. It was more cool reading him in
the 70's and 80's because he was from behind the iron curtain. I
wrote to him once, care of HBJ an got a letter back from Dr. Franz
Rottensteiner, his long time literary agent. I'd like to try again.
I believe the only language he and I have in common is Latin, so if I
ever get the nerve, I'll write to him in Latin and see if that
provokes a response.
Michal Jankowski
erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) writes:
> Yes, it was N, and yes, it was Natrium. And the Polish for "nothing"
> is "nic". He doesn't say what the Polish for "sodium" is.
It's "sod", with an accent mark over the "o".
MJ
Christian Weisgerber
aros...@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu (Adam Rosenblatt, M.D.) writes:
> Lem as I understand it is rather solitary and does most of
> corrsponding through his literary agent.
He is said to be a perfectionist and generally a difficult character.
:-)
> It used to say that he lived in cracow on his book jackets, but now it
> says he lives in Vienna.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That seems to be an American rumor nobody in Europe has heard of. (Other
than by reading this group, that is.)
--
Christian 'naddy' Weisgerber na...@mips.rhein-neckar.de
See another pointless homepage at <URL:http://home.pages.de/~naddy/>.
Arthur Hlavaty
James Michael Rogers (je...@ionet.net) wrote:
: Jo Walton (J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: > Philip K Dick doubted that Stanislaw Lem actually existed and he>: > He
: thought the entity known as Stanislaw Lem was actually a collective...
: I was curious about this, because in Dick's biography it is mentioned
: that he corresponded with Lem (or with"Lem"), had some form of royalty
: grudge against him, and eventually succesfully lobbied to have him thrown
: out of SFWA. Do you think that Dick was sincere in this belief,or was he
: simply venting the ol' spleen?
From time to time, Philip K. Dick was sincere in any number of beliefs
that most of us could not utter with a straight face; one of the things
that made him such a fascinating writer was that he was Really Like That.
I hadn't heard the one about the collective Lem, but it sounds like Dick
at his best.
Lem helped arrange for some of Dick's books to be translated into Polish.
Dick (erroneously and probably with not much encouragement from lem) came
to believe that this was going to make him a whole bunch of money (in
dollars). When he discovered that he would be paid in zlotys, he decided
that the whole thing was Lem's fault.
The SFWA story is somewhat more complex. Basically some adrmirers of Lem's
got him an *honorary* membership in SFWA, in the mistaken belief that he,
as a foreign writer, was not eligible for regular membership. Shortly
thereafter, he did one of his typically ignorant & argumentative essays on
how no American sf is any good except maybe some of Dick's stuff. (He is a
much better fiction writer than critic.) This was reprinted in one of the
SFWA publications, inspiring a number of complaints about an honorary
member being so nasty. Dick joined in the general outcry.
At this point one of the officers noted that Lem was (and had been all
along) eligible for regular membership in SFWA, and suggested that his
honorary membership be withdrawn, and that he be invitred to join. That
was done, but a number of writers (many with political axes to grind)
denounced the arrangement, and it seems to have been remembered as a case
where Lem was "kicked out of SFWA for his opinions)--a gross and
misleading oversimplification.
--
Arthur D. Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius In Wile E. We Trust
\\\ E-zine available on request. ///
Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew
>> Philip K Dick doubted that Stanislaw Lem actually existed and he>: > He
>> thought the entity known as Stanislaw Lem was actually a collective...
>
> I was curious about this, because in Dick's biography it is mentioned
> that he corresponded with Lem (or with"Lem"), had some form of royalty
> grudge against him, and eventually succesfully lobbied to have him thrown
> out of SFWA. Do you think that Dick was sincere in this belief,or was he
> simply venting the ol' spleen?
"I confess that I made a blunder when I wrote this monograph, since then I
knew only Dick's short stories and his _Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep?_ I believed that I could rely on reviews published in the fanzines
of other novels of Dick, with the result that I considered him merely a
"better van Vogt", which he is not. This mistake was due to the state of
science-fiction criticism." (Lem, _Microworlds_, pp. 45-46)
FWIW.
--
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FAQs: rec.arts.sf.written, alt.pulp, the Liaden Universe
Biblios: how to write SF, the Wandering Jew
Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew
Adam Rosenblatt, M.D. (aros...@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu) wrote: [snip]
> Lem as I understand it is
> agent. It used to say that he lived in cracow on his book jackets,
> but now it says he lives in Vienna. It was more cool reading him in
> the 70's and 80's because he was from behind the iron curtain. I
> wrote to him once, care of HBJ an got a letter back from Dr. Franz
> Rottensteiner, his long time literary agent. I'd like to try again.
"FRANZ ROTTENSTEINER remains almost tight-lipped about his split with
Stanislaw Lem: `Since Stanislaw Lem's books no longer sell even in those
countries where they once sold, the author has discovered a new source
of income: he is asking his ex-agent Franz Rottensteiner to sign letters
granting Mr Lem $50,000 in punitive damages should Rottensteiner make use
of Lem's letters in any way whatsoever or insult the author in any way.
Strictly factual reporting is allowed. A sure win-situation since the
facts in the case are deeply insulting to Mr Lem.'" (Ansible 106)
Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew
> wonder is this: how much is him? So much of the fun of his writing is the
> play with words, the neologisms, the puns. In English. In their place,
> in the original language, was there anything to compare, anything
> comparable?
>
> Or should I be in love with the writing of the translators (mostly Michael
> Kandel)? Not to say Lem doesn't have some spectacular ideas, but...
You can try Kandel's novels: _Captain Jack Zodiac_, _In between dragons_,
_Strange invasion_, _Panda Ray_. I don't consider them terribly Lem-like
(although some influence is obvious), but YMMV.