![]() ![]() I hadn't realised that a translator might get exclusive rights to an author's work, and after reading David Luke's translation (permissible now that Lowe-Porter's rights have expired), I don't think one should. David Luke maintains that Lowe-Porter's translations were sub-par, listing some of her errors, which ranged from simple lexical misunderstanding - by confusing two similar German nouns, she described something as 'rootless' when it should have been 'savourless' - to meaning-altering gaffes. Knopf, had decided to grant her the exclusive English translation rights. I wrongly assumed that her translations were ubiquitous because they were the gold standard. Later, years after college when my German had rusted to the point of inoperability, I re-read it in English, always in translation by Helen Lowe-Porter. I first read Thomas Mann's work in German. ![]() This section gave me pause and triggered some reflection on the role of translation. At the end of it, however, he explains his motivation to put out his own, new translation of these stories. The first 20% of the book is Luke's introduction, a predictably academic dissection of Mann and his work. I was re-reading the last two the first five were new to me. The contents, in chronological order, are Little Herr Friedemann, The Joker, The Road to the Churchyard, Gladius Dei, Tristan, Tonio Kroeger, and Death in Venice. This is a 1988 Bantam collection of Mann's novellas, translated by David Luke, Lecturer in German at Oxford. ![]()
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