IMT-4107 – Current Issues in Translation Final Assignment
03.01.2025
Emirhan Durur
Day 1 (20.12.2024)
I have selected a short story titled “Why Don’t You Dance”, written by Raymond Carver, in his short story collection “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. My interest for his stories come from Robert Altman’s movie Short Cuts (1993) which was adapted to screen from Raymond Carver’s stories. The story is about the encounter in a peculiar yard sale between a man and a young couple. My initial reaction to the piece is that two young people are buying stuff for their house and a man is divorced and tries to sell the remaining furniture and belongings. There is a detailed description of the items. There, we also learn that they are arranged in a way as if they are in a room. Young couple tries the furniture, the girl is interested in the bed and the boy is more keen with the TV set. There is a bleak but cheerful atmosphere in the story. Characters in this short story are nonchalant or trying to act like that. The man is constantly drinking alcohol and the conversations between the boy and the girl are somewhat “apart”. After they look at the records, the man asks the young couple: “Why don’t you dance?” The boy says he is drunk and he will not dance. Girl goes to the man and they start to dance. There is a somewhat intimate episode between the man and the girl. In the last paragraph, we learn that after some weeks the girl is telling the encounter to everyone as she seeks to talk out of it. She is unable to grasp what really has happened in the event and after a while, she gives up which tells there is more to the story than the face value.
Day 2 (22.12.2024)
The author begins his story by describing items in an unusual yard sale. These items are carefully arranged so that they resemble a room and they are connected to power as well. He uses the words “his side” and “her side”, which gives the story a sense of the split from the very beginning. After that, a young couple comes to the yard sale, the author uses two dichotomic words “furnishing” and “mince”. Young couple is furnishing their apartment, quite the opposite of the man’s situation at that moment. It can be said that the house has been minced into small pieces, just like crumbles of his relationship. The girl uses the word “desperate” two times, first to the boy about financial need and second time to the man about his emotional need. I found it fascinating. The whole encounter is bizarre and the boy and the girl have a hard time processing what is happening. The girl thinks she could “see a star”, and says “Wouldn’t it be funny if” stops talking abruptly which strengthens this idea. In the last paragraph, we also learn that the girl is unable to articulate her feelings about the encounter and gives up “talking out”.
Words
Day 3 (24.12.2024)
In his short story, “Why Don’t You Dance” Raymond Carver depicts an unusual yard sale. Items outside are meticulously arranged to resemble their original placement in the room and have power, meaning they are ready to use. The author describes the objects in detail, to the point of their origin. The author says that a young couple arrives, interested in the bed and TV. They negotiate with the man, and after they have agreed on prices, the man asks them to dance on his driveway. Carver explains that the couple starts to dance and man eventually joins them. He creates a moment where man and the girl are close to each other. In the last paragraph, the author states that weeks later, the girl recounts the experience, suggesting it had an impression on the girl and she is not able to get over it. She ultimately gives up “get it talked out”. A simple yard sale turns into something poignant and memorable.
Day 4 (27.12.2024)
A critically acclaimed author, Raymond Carver, was born in 1938 and died in 1988. He was a part of lower-middle-class and his short stories reflect the lifestyle of said culture. His stories are simple yet complex . He is a highly respected figure in American short story and writes in dirty realism. Ayça Sabuncuoğlu is an editor and translator who was born in 1972. She worked as the editor of Harry Potter and translated Zweig’s short story Chess. She also translated Raymond Carver’s stories into Turkish. My online research showed that her translations were questionable in some aspects so I have directed my focus onto those areas. My research led me to think about the piece more. Normally, I do not think about the symbolic background of a text but reading it again and again, and understanding the merits of the author, I started to question phrases. I dissected the story in a way, which is something I do not regularly do. Understanding the background of the author was integral to my reception of the text.
Day 5 (28.12.2024)
I read the short story to a friend of mine. Her reactions were somewhat different than mine which I guess has to do with the purpose of reading. She said that word flow was somewhat poetic. She noticed that some sentences were inverted but she said the general flow of the story was good. She said that the first part was somewhat hard to understand because of the author’s choice of first listing the objects and then telling where they are. All in all, she has enjoyed the visual and auditory atmosphere. She told me that conversations between characters felt unscripted. We have thought about the part where the man and the girl danced and imagined a shadow relationship. She also found that the last paragraph was sincere, she understood the girl’s feelings. Reading the story and then taking notes of what she said made me understand how our understandings differed when we have different purposes of receiving a text. I tried pretty hard to grasp the text and squeeze the meaning out of it. Reading again and seeing it from another perspective was an interesting experiment.
Day 6 (30.12.2024)
I have been reading both the original text and the translation for more than a week now. Difference between the source and target text is minute but it should not be overlooked. First of all, I should note that my edition has two misspelled words, “şifoniyer” and “blendır”. I am not sure if this is intentional or a mistake. Moreover, the translator does not translate the word “yard sale”, instead she says “kullanılmış eşyaları satmak” which brings the text to the target culture. This is again seen with the translation of “chafing dish” which she translates as “ısıtıcılı servis tabağı”. The phrases “I feel funny” and “Wouldn’t it be funny if,” are translated in “Kendimi tuhaf hissediyorum” and “Eğlenceli olmaz mıydı?” which, in my opinion, changes the reception of the text, especially because those words are relatively near each other. There is an issue with the usage of “desperate” as “çaresiz”. I believe it diminishes the original meaning which is stronger. I have used Venuti’s rules to flourish my readings of both versions. For example, the meaning is completely correct in the Turkish usage but I questioned some word choices of the translator after understanding Venuti’s approach. I was lucky to find some analysis of the original text which made me see the work in a different perspective.
Day 7 (02.01.2025)
After spending the past two weeks with the short story, I realized my reception was rather shallow. My ideas about the text have changed, I did really live with the author and the translation after all. First of all, I started to really like the first part where Carver designs a room outside of the house. It made me is it the walls that really make the house. Abrupt ending made me feel left out in my initial reading because I was not able to understand what has happened. Now I see that the ending reflects unresolved feelings, which is integral to the story. “Reverse” theme is going throughout the story, both in “inside out room” which signals that something has become upside down in man’s life and in the girl’s choice to change dance partners in the dancing scene. As they dance people look at them, meaning that what they are doing clashes with the social norms. Whole story felt like the calm before the storm. As a result of my deep interaction with the source and target text, my perspective regarding author and translator’s role have changed. I understood that there is a purpose between in every choice and that purpose can be received if I paid enough attention. Also, I have understood that texts often have an underlying layer between them and reading between the lines is essential for understanding what is really being said. I thought I had selected a relatively simple story, but after my second reading I have found myself in Carver’s world where he changes the whole. Accuracy of the translation and language use is especially important for this quality. There were some phrases I could not understand both in the source and target text but they are resolved after reading again. I can also say I have used online search to understand what the author is trying to say and luckily there was quite some discussion about the work, there was even a movie adapted from the short story but I did not watch it. This extended engagement period told me that I can understand with enough attention and research. In short it engraved the story into my brain.