Every now and then, translation can pose some problems. Do
you translate something literally or change the literal meaning to get more of
the implication and flavour? What do you do when there is an obvious rhythm,
rhyme, plosive structure that matters but can’t be carried across into English?
How do you translate it when someone has been playing with their words? What do
you do with names?
Usually, when translating into English I choose to keep the
original name. I think that most of the people who are reading my subtitles
could work out that, Zsuzsanna, for example, is the Hungarian spelling of
Susanna. However, even if this is not the case I think that everyone could
learn that when I write Zsuzsanna I am referring to a certain character or
person.
However, with the musicals that I translate there are
sometimes some additional difficulties with characters being well known or
having more unusual character names. Der Tod, for example, is often used by
English speaking fans of the musical Elisabeth to refer to the character
himself. In Japanese the character is actually called "トート", "Toto", which
is derived from his German character name. However, I hardly think that Der Tod’s
mother named him that when he was born, and somewhere he probably has a perfectly
ordinary name (like Brian), so it’s probably good practice to translate this to
Death, in the musical. It’s more a descriptive title than a name.
So what about historical characters? Franz Joseph, for
example, seems to appear in most English history books, that I have seen, as
Francis Joseph. How should this be written? Quite frankly, it really annoys me
to see him referred to as Francis so my choice here was selfish rather than
based purely on logic. That said, it’s probably right to keep it in the
original German, which is sometimes used in English anyway, especially when
Franz Joseph is the name that was used by the Emperor and in the musical. He’s
also not the most famous ruler in history – I was a history student and most of
my classes hadn’t heard of him - so people are less likely to need to know who
he is to enjoy the musical anyway.
However, it’s not always that simple. If I were to ask you
to tell me about King Ludwig XVI you are unlikely to be able to tell me much
about the gentleman I’m referring to. If I were to ask you about King Louis XVI
you will probably be able to tell me a bit more, especially if I also said he
was the husband of Marie Antoinette. It seems sensible, therefore, for me to
choose to translate Ludwig back to its original French and away from the German
version used in the musical of Marie Antoinette. Marie Antoinette herself is
known by her French name (which is bizarre considering that, as an Austrian by birth,
Maria Antonia’s original name was
German anyway) so I also feel there should be some continuity. All the same, I
feel really bad deviating from my usual ‘use the name used in the
play/musical/text’ resolution.
So here’s the question: Does the translation, or lack of
translation, of names into English matter to you? Which do you prefer?
 |
| Louis or Ludwig, Marie Antoinette or Maria Antonia, and does it really matter? |
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