{"id":90540,"date":"2015-10-05T17:08:04","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T21:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=90540"},"modified":"2015-10-05T17:08:04","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T21:08:04","slug":"nonsense-verse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/05\/nonsense-verse\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonsense Verse"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

West Frisian Alice.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cA language is not complete if there are no translations of the\u00a0Bible, Shakespeare, and\u00a0Alice in Wonderland<\/em>,\u201d the translator\u00a0Tiny Mulder wrote in 1962. Would that it were so easy! The Grolier Club\u2019s current exhibition is called \u201cAlice in a World of Wonderlands<\/a>,\u201d and its subject is\u00a0Alice in Wonderland<\/em>\u00a0in translation, on the occasion of the book\u2019s 150th anniversary. Like all the Grolier\u2019s shows, it is free to the public. And at 140 translations\u2014and a bevy of very different Alices\u2014it\u2019s well worth a visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are Braille editions and Frisian editions and Pakistani editions. We see Alice\u2019s adventures rendered in Farsi, in Uyghur, in Hebrew, and in\u00a0J\u00e8rriais, a Norman language spoken in some of the Channel Islands. Naturally, Carroll\u2019s own Nyctographic language (invented for\u00a0Alice<\/em>) is represented, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All this is impressive enough, and speaks to the \u2026 well, the universality of Charles Dodgson\u2019s book. Nonsense is a common language, and every world can imagine itself frighteningly upended. But as interesting as the show\u2019s scope are the substantial challenges of translation, especially since a nonsense world requires a kind of straight man\u2014a sense <\/em>world\u2014to function as the opposition. The young mathematician placed Alice in a world that was a stark contrast to the rigors and rules of Victorian England. What happens when you take that Englishness away?<\/p>\n

Says a Bengali translator, \u201cThe gaps between English and the Indian vernacular are not merely linguistic and cultural. Tailoring the text to fit the requirements of Bengali-speaking region entails a mammoth effort to overcome many differences.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of the 1982 Marathi edition,\u00a0Jaai\u2019s Wonderful Story<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>the translator explains that \u201cwhen I transformed Alice into Jaai I taught her not only customs and traditions of this land, but also the popular songs and traditions known to all.\u201d Meanwhile, one Slovenian scholar tells us\u00a0that readers in her region \u201chave been slow to accept the literary genre of nonsense. Comedy and satire have been more welcome in Slovenian literary history but not nonsense, which has only recently been fully accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it explains the seriousness\u2014even panic\u2014in the faces of some of these Alices. (Then again, that\u2019s visible on the face of Alice Liddell, too.) Nonsense is not an easy export.<\/p>\n

\"FullSizeRender\"<\/a>

Slovakian Alice.<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Georgian Alice.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA language is not complete if there are no translations of the\u00a0Bible, Shakespeare, and\u00a0Alice in Wonderland,\u201d the translator\u00a0Tiny Mulder wrote in 1962. Would that it were so easy! The Grolier Club\u2019s current exhibition is called \u201cAlice in a World of Wonderlands,\u201d and its subject is\u00a0Alice in Wonderland\u00a0in translation, on the occasion of the book\u2019s 150th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[19649,593,19647,687,594,4588,19648,530],"class_list":["post-90540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-alice-in-a-world-of-wonderlands","tag-alice-in-wonderland","tag-charles-dodgson","tag-language","tag-lewis-carroll","tag-the-grolier-club","tag-tiny-mulder","tag-translation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAlice in a World of Wonderlands: Translating Lewis Carroll<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 5, 2015 \u2013 \u201cA language is not complete if there are no translations 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