The very thing that drew me to the analysis of literary translations is the question of how humor and irony make it through the process. In my previous work I've used a number of passages from throughout a work to investigate this question.
Though I had previously done that very thing for this old translation of Arrowsmith, I had missed what is now, by Chapter 7, turning out to be a theme: Clif Clawson is very difficult to translate.
In Section IV, Clif says this to Leora: "Honey, I think a lot of Mart, and one time I was afraid the old kid was going to get tied up to -- to parties that would turn him into a hand-shaker. I'm a hand-shaker myself. I know less about medicine than Prof Robertshaw. But this boob has some conscience to him, and I'm so darn' glad he's playing around with a girl that's real folks and -- Oh, listen at me fallin' all over my clumsy feet! But I just mean I hope you won't mind Uncle Clif saying he does by golly like you a lot!"
Now, you can imagine the pitfalls for a translator. In this case, the idiom 'think a lot of' ended up rendered literally. That's doesn't change things terribly, but then 'this boob,' which clearly must refer to Martin, is taken to mean Robertshaw. Now the rest of it ends up as though it refers to the professor, which is to say, the rest of it is now nonsense.
Well, of course I fixed it. I'm writing a lot more Japanese from whole cloth than I ever expected. It's pretty darn fun, and a bit scary. Maybe someday some Japanese person will blog about all the mistakes that silly gaijin (foreigner) made when he tried to fix the original translation.
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