Kafka Translation

[Pierre Menard]

Hey folks. Just a quick question for you well read people.

When it comes to Kafka, I'm tossing up about which translation to buy. The Muir's translation seems to be the most popular, however I've heard they tend to add their own personal biases to the work. The other option tends to be the new penguin classics translations.

Any help would be appreciated.

[laymonite]

Besides myself, I know that David Foster Wallace liked the Muirs' translation, if that helps any (citation: one of the essays in Consider the Lobster, probably the one on Kafka's humor).

[kiki1982]

I wouldn't go for Muir, as they indeed interpreted rather than translated. Something Kafka himself despised.

Have a look on Kafka.org. There are several translations for free. I personally didn't like Johnson.

I quite like Bell's translation of The Castle, although it is somtimes a bit too formal and idiomatic.

Whatever you choose, please remember Kafka should not be idiomatic. If anything he is bland, though brilliant at sentences (mindboggling). His vocabulary is not lyrical, but normal, almost business-like. He was trained as a lawyer and used that type of arguing his point endlessly (literally!) in his writings, whether they were letters (to lovers too, poor girls) or stories. As for punctuation, it is quite hard to preserve it, but not impossible.

[sixsmith]

JM Coetzee has published an essay on the topic of Kafka's translators in which he discusses the many problems that plague the Muirs' efforts. As Kiki points out, their renderings were considerably more expressive and vivid than Kafka, whose German was very restrained and tended towards repetition. Moreover, their German was self taught, meaning they lacked knowledge in specialised areas of German/Austrian life. That, as Coetzee suggests, is a not inconsiderable problem given Kafka's focus on the law and legal bureaucracy.

[dfloyd]

of Kafka's friend, who didn't destroy Kafka's writings as kafka wished. The new translation supposedly came from a finding of Kafka's original writing. But after listening to all the problems said to be in the Muirs' translation, I felt it just a bunch of academic gibberish. I didn't get any more out of the new translation of The Trial than I did when I read it 25 years ago.

The important thing is to read Kafka and not quibble over a few misplced words. I think you can certainly get the essence of Kafka from the Muir translations, although there maybe some places where the newer translations are closer to Kafka's original writings.

All this argument over translations is like should Homer be translated in rhyme or free verse? Or is reading from a Kindle really like reading a book? Do what you want, or better yet, what is most convenient. As for me, I'm sick of translation arguments.

[kiki1982]

The Muirs leave a lot of the threefold (or however you call that) bottoms out of Kafka's work. In favour of their religious interpretations, which are definitely in the original, but not on their own. Kafka is so rich in irony and hilarious comparisons that it is quite mindboggling that someone would like to do away with it. He himself found that his work should not be interpreted at all and even made objections to calling Samsa a cockroach or putting a cockroach on the cover of the published edition. he did not want to do that because he said he did not even have a cockroach in mind when writing the Metamorphosis. Why then do this to other works of his?

I would not say the Muirs put a 'few misplaced words', but rather re-edited the whole thing, judging by a few passages. I am not saying that the texts they translated were not edited or anything. Inevitably the published texts of Kafka were edited. If you read his letters, you cannot imagine reading a whole novel of that, but I do not consider flooding your translation with idiom after idiom as doing justice to Kafka. If anything, the translator should kind of read some legal texts first and then start, just to get the really factual, clear, wordy and minitious feel right.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh, looking at my Kafka I have the Muir translation. I was going to look over it again tomorrow sometime (it has been decades since I picked it up). Still, I sort of think like dfloyd in a way, better to read it in any translation then not at all.

[Pierre Menard]

Thanks for the responses guys.
It was actually the whole 'cockroach' thing that turned me off the new penguin translations because I knew of Kafka's distaste for it.

The only other translation I have access to conveniently is Malcolm Pasley's.

I might just have to bite the bullet and decide on one, and hope that Kafka's essence shines through. If not, I can always try another translation I guess.

Thanks guys.