Voluptuous Maiden

Late in Chapter 12, Gottlieb has just been dismissed from the university when his wife falls ill. He calls Dean Silva who graciously makes a house call. Looking around the room the Dean sees, among other things, "the color-print of a virtuously voluptuous maiden."

This phrase conjured, for me, an image which I have seen numerous times before: a curvaceous but well-covered young lady. But the translator has turned this into "modest but lust inducing." Not at all the kind of picture I expect to be hanging there near the crucifix. 

The word voluptuous, in English, does have this latter meaning too; in purely linguistic terms, the translation is not wrong. But it's a cultural cue that I think the Western reader would use to disambiguate. We've seen that picture before, where, perhaps our translator was used to the Japanese version of a beautiful maiden, slender, with any hints of curves carefully concealed in a kimono. No wonder he got it wrong. 

For me this project began as an effort to preserve a good but dated translation of a beautiful work. All along I have shown deference to the original translator, allowing him his own interpretations to the extent that I felt fidelity to the original work would allow. 

In the case of brass bands, discussed previously, I was able to use other research to verify that Lewis meant what I thought he did. Here I cannot, and yet I feel fairly confident that I know what he meant. So I did change the translation, and in doing so, I realized that I've begun to allow myself a bit more latitude. 

Certainly I will always keep it faithful to Lewis, and I will continue to admire the tremendous accomplishment of the original translator. But, in the end, I think they'll both forgive me if I do leave behinds a few breadcrumbs.