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Author
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Comment
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johnmichael
Unregistered User
(5/25/06 7:37 pm)
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Edgar Taylor
I was reading some Taylor translations of Grimm. Doesn't seem to be a terribly accurate translation... not just the bowlderizations (which don't bother me too much) but it seems less literary than other translations I've seen. Simplification of language and whole chunks of prose simply cut... often the loveliest and most poetic parts. I know the translation is from 1823... long before the final Grimm edition. Can anyone tell me if the differences in the translation are editorial decisions by Taylor or if the Grimms made their fairy tales more verbose in subsequent editions.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(5/29/06 1:22 am)
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Ralph Mannheim
I haven't read Taylor's, but the recent translation by Ralph Mannheim (Doubleday, 1977), which reads to me very bare and spare, was made from a edition of Grimm published in 1819. His Introduction doesn't mention other editions of Grimm, but says the Grimms use "a natural human voice ... and seldom if ever do we hear anything resembling the never-never, good-nursery, fairy-tale style prevalent in the English translations of these and other folk tales." He is attempting "a new translation that will be faithful to the Grimms brothers' faithfulness [to their oral sources]."
I thought his lost a lot of the wonder and beauty of the other translations: Lang, Crane, even Hunt. Mannheim focuses on the local elements -- voice, local furniture and plants -- rather than on the magic.
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johnmichael
Unregistered User
(5/30/06 6:20 am)
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edgar taylor
I've never read Manheim's translation. I don't care very much for 20th century fairy tale translations... Jack Zipes' translations of French fairy tales reintroduced me as a teenager to the beauty of fairy tales but, looking back on them, I think the 20th century prose is somehow unmagical (if that's a word). Still prettily told but I have a feeling that the more ornate and archaic Victorian translations are closer to the spirit, if not always the letter, of the old tales.
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Don
Registered User
(5/30/06 3:18 pm)
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Re: edgar taylor
Some postings from this site's archive are relevant to this thread, particularly about Taylor's translations and the edition Manheim used for his translation (it's not the 1819 edition, as the note on the verso of the title page erroneously states). See the DH postings in the archive.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(5/31/06 2:35 am)
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Re: edgar taylor
[[ I have a feeling that the more ornate and archaic Victorian translations are closer to the spirit, if not always the letter, of the old tales. ]]
Leaving aside the tricky term 'original tales', I'd say that the oral audience and tellers that the Grimms got their version from -- were interested in the magic and the romance and such. They gathered to hear a storyteller take them out of the smoky room into the fairyland; not to examine the storyteller and the room, which I feel is what Manheim is doing.
Also the oral storytellers had ways of expression that don't come through in Manheim's. It's like reading a script instead of watching a play. What the tellers could put in by acting, gestures, tone of voice -- we need to get by extra description and detail and richer language.
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