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language: Japanese (English tr. Tyran Grillo)
country: Japan
year: 1985
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Legend of the Galactic Heroes, #4
dates read: 22.11.22-29.11.22
book 4 of Legend of the Galactic Heroes has a different translator than books 1-3, and the translation is, unfortunately, very obviously, painfully poorer quality.
every paragraph is just slightly incoherent. I’m more than willing to accept that Daniel Huddleston did some smoothing in his translations of books 1-3 (we all do, because nobody, no matter how good, sustains perfect prose for every single sentence through an entire novel), but not this much smoothing. there keep being slight malapropisms that make me think Tyran Grillo just…didn’t think fully about the sentences he was translating. like:
Phezzan’s overconfident commissioner Boltec, for his part, had too many tricks up his sleeve. There was no room for error. So long as they feigned ignoance as innocent bystanders and negotiated off the record, a compromise on the Phezzan end was inevitable. That idiot had failed. And the reason he’d failed was because he’d misjudged Reinhard von Lohengramm as a possible puppet, on par with that good-for-nothing poet. Boltec would surely make up for his ignorance and impropriety.
I obviously can’t check but I’m like 95% sure the verb last sentence is something that can mean “make up for” but in this context is supposed to mean “pay for” — 償う, maybe (per Jisho). I also suspect something has gone wrong in the first sentence and it’s supposed to mean something like Boltec tried one too many tricks. but also — both on its own and in context — the whole paragraph is just…off? it doesn’t make sense. it feels like each sentence was translated in isolation from the rest of the book.
the incoherency of the translation at times actively impedes my ability to understand what’s going on — politically, at least, which, since the first three chapters have been entirely about political machinations, is a big deal. I’m not the first person to notice this, although somehow the SF in Translation blog gave it a glowing review and described Grillo’s work as a “meticulous, smooth translation” and gave it 5 stars on Goodreads.
aside from this, the other problem with the book is that we don’t get a Yang chapter until fully a third of the way through the book. Reinhard is boring! I don’t care about Imperial politics! bring me Yang Wen-li and Julian!
all told, in terms of its plot, characterization, etc., it was…fine. definitely a filler novel. I don’t have a lot to say. excited to see more of Phezzan in the next book. there was way too much Reinhard and way too little Yang.
Tyran Grillo’s translation is not fine. it is, generally, mildly incoherent. as I said before, it feels like he went through sentence by sentence and translated each sentence as if it were in perfect isolation, rather than being part of a novel. subjects and speakers are misidentified. plot and characterization details are wrong. malapropisms are everywhere. it’s bad.
also unfortunately, I still crave Yang Wen-li content, so I will power through books 5 and 6 and then hope that Matt Treyvaud’s translations of books 7-9 are better. thankfully book 10, at least, is Huddleston again.
moods: reflective