#cyberiad

In conclusion,

Often the translator fades into the background. I mean, unless you’re doing direct comparisons of a text with multiple translations or you have or can read the work in the original, the translation rarely figures.

Then you read The Cyberiad and think, “holy hell, who translated this, b/c HOW?”

The Cyberiad is a series of (hilarious) Polish short stories about two engineer-inventor rival-friends who go around the universe, occasionally collaborating, usually competing, sometimes saving each other, sometimes beating each other up. It’s complicated.

The words. The rhythm. The play. HOW did anyone translate this and manage to keep it fun?

Michael Kandel is a BEAST.

I’m just going to throw up a couple quotes (stolen from Goodreads) and I want you to imagine what the original must be like and how difficult it had to have been to translate.

“It is said, for example, that dragons can sometimes have seven heads. This is sheer nonsense. A dragon can have only one head, for the simple reason that having two leads to disagreements and violent quarrels; the polyhydroids, as the scholars call them, died out as a result of internal feuds. Stubborn and headstrong by nature, dragons cannot tolerate opposition, therefore two heads in one body will always bring about a swift death: each head, purely to spite the other, refuses to eat, then maliciously holds its breath—with the usual consequences. It was this phenomenon which Euphorius Cloy exploited when he invented the anticapita cannon. A small auxiliary electron head is discharged into the dragon's body. This immediately gives rise to unreconcilable differences of opinion and the dragon is immobilized by the ensuing deadlock. Often it will stand there, stiff as a board, for a day, a week, even a month; sometimes a year goes by before the beast will collapse, exhausted. Then you can do with it what you will.”

“But the King, nothing daunted, put on his Markov chain mail and all his impervious parameters, took his increment Δk to infinity and dealt the beast a truly Boolean blow, sent it reeling through an x-axis and several brackets—but”

And of course there’s the utterly impossible poetry...

“Have it compose a poem — a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!”

“And why not throw in a full exposition of the general theory of nonlinear automata while you’re at it?” growled Trurl. “You can’t give it such idiotic — ”

But he didn’t finish. A melodious voice filled the hall with the following: