[Vwoolf] "The 'Increasing' Black Population in Virginia Woolf's Fiction"

[Stuart N. Clarke]

This is the title of an article of mine in VWM81* & VWB37.  It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what translators have made of the problem, and, if I am right, more black people are appearing in translations. My knowledge of foreign languages is limited, and the examples I’m choosing from “Jacob’s Room” are another problem, since generally it was not one of the first of Woolf’s books to be translated.  The only complete translation to appear in her lifetime was Swedish (selections appeared in French in journals).  And of course, I don’t have all the translations.
*https://virginiawoolfmiscellany.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/vwm81spring2012.pdf

Ch. VI: Out she swept, the black woman with the dancing feather in her hat.

Ch. XII: Italy is all fierceness, bareness, exposure, and black priests shuffling along the roads. 

FRENCH

Jean Talva, 1942: “la femme en noir”; “prêtres” [no adjective!].

Magali Merle, 1993: “la femme en noir”; “noire prêtraille” [an obscure word to me, which I am guessing means clergy].

Adolphe Haberer, 2012: “la femme noire”; “prêtres noirs”.

PORTUGUESE

Maria Teresa Guerreiro, 1989 (Brazil):  “a mulher negra”; “padres de preto”.

Lucília Rodrigues, 1992 (Portugal): “a mulher negra”; “padres negros”.

ITALIAN

Anna Banti, 1950: “la donna in nero”; “neri preti”.

Mirella Billi, 1994: “la donna vestita di nero”; “preti neri”.

GERMAN

Gustav K. Kemperdick, 1981: “die schwarze Frau”; “schwarze Priester”.

Heidi Zerning, 1998: “die schwarze Frau”; “schwarze Priester”.

SWEDISH

Siri Thorngren-Olin, 1927: “den mörka kvinnan”; “svarta präster”.

Siri Thorngren-Olin (revised by unknown), 2007: “den mörka kvinnan”; “svarta präster”.


I think the tendency is there, although these examples are not conclusive.  However, translators should not make a book simpler for their readers than it is for the (English) native speaker.  If the word seems more ambiguous (or even more misleading) now than it did in 1922, to what extent should the translator use a contemporary word or interpretation?  Yet, I don’t want to read Dante in English, where the English seems incomprehensible:

Now had the sun to that horizon reached,
That covers, with the most exalted point
Of its meridian circle, Salem’s walls,
And night, that opposite to him her orb
Rounds, from the stream of Ganges issued forth,
Holding the scales,  that from her hands are dropped
When she reigns highest ...

Stuart
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20180428/10d5b751/attachment.html>