# Gdybyż przynajmniej nie wypadał z narzuconej sobie roli!



## zzjing

More Solaris:

– Proszę o głos – odezwał się Sartorius. Nie cierpiałem go. Gdybyż przynajmniej nie wypadał z narzuconej sobie roli!​
2010 English translation:

If he’d only step out of the role he’d imposed upon himself!​
Is this accurate? Google Translate doesn't seem to handle this one very well.


----------



## anthox

This seems more or less accurate to me (native English speaker translating from Polish). I think this "przynajmniej nie" construction is one of those instances where a negated statement must be positively expressed in English, e.g. "Jan omal nie zginął" (John almost died). 

wypadać z <narzuconej sobie> roli = to act out of/differently from <one's self-imposed> character 

The only thing left out of the translation is "przynajmniej" which in this context I would render as "for once".


----------



## Piotr_WRF

The negation seems to be missing.
_If only he didn't step out..._


----------



## jasio

Piotr_WRF said:


> The negation seems to be missing.
> _If only he didn't step out..._


Indeed, the Polish wording implies that Sartorius did not act out his character very consistently - and his deviations could have contributed to the narrator's aversion to him.


----------



## zzjing

jasio said:


> Indeed, the Polish wording implies that Sartorius did not act out his character very consistently - and his deviations could have contributed to the narrator's aversion to him.


Hmmm... What about anthox's interpretation above? It seems to make more sense in this case.


----------



## Poland91pl

zzjing said:


> Hmmm... What about anthox's interpretation above? It seems to make more sense in this case.


I can’t agree with Anthox. The negation clearly seems to be missing here. Without the negation it means the opposite rather than what it really does.


----------



## zzjing

Poland91pl said:


> I can’t agree with Anthox. The negation clearly seems to be missing here. Without the negation it means the opposite rather than what it really does.


So how would you put it in English?


----------



## jasio

zzjing said:


> Hmmm... What about anthox's interpretation above? It seems to make more sense in this case.


Grammatially speaking, I do not feel like that, to make a long story short.

But it's Lem, and he's known for using a specific language - and I recall myself analysing structures of his phrases to even understand what he could have had in mind in the works much simpler than "Solaris". So I won't bet my kids heads on what he meant here. ;-)

To decide, you would need to evaluate Sartorius'es bahaviour in other situations and judge if his quite formal behaviour in this particular case was typical or non-typical for him (ie. if he played within or out of the character) to select the most appropriate wording in Mandarine. After all, the 2010 version translator dropped the negation for a reason.


----------



## karaluszek

jasio said:


> After all, the 2010 version translator dropped the negation for a reason.


I believe that Jasio is right.
Here's what you can read about the 2011 English edition on Stanislaw Lem's Official Site:


> Previous translation was remotely related to the children's "broken telephone game"; initially the book was translated from Polish into French. Then the French text served as a basis for the English edition.
> The new meticulous translation is the work of Bill Johnston, a professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University.


And this is what the author of the blog "Weighing a pig doesn't fatten it" writes about the translation:


> The English translation from 1970 by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox was based on a French version. Not ideal, and Lem wasn’t satisfied with the result either. Sadly, it is the only available English version in print, even though Bill Johnston completed a direct translation from the original Polish in 2011 – a version Lem’s wife and son thought “captured the spirit of the original.”


Bill Johnston is considered one of the best and most important translators of Polish literature into English.


----------



## zzjing

karaluszek said:


> I believe that Jasio is right.
> Here's what you can read about the 2011 English edition on Stanislaw Lem's Official Site:
> 
> And this is what the author of the blog "Weighing a pig doesn't fatten it" writes about the translation:
> 
> Bill Johnston is considered one of the best and most important translators of Polish literature into English.


I am now translating Johnston's English edition into Chinese, so the game of "telephone" continues.  To minimize mistakes, I'm also referring to the original Polish and the German translation, with the help of Google Translate and People Like You. 

I actually contacted Professor Johnston about some mistakes I have found in the new English edition and asked a few questions, and got a nice reply from him.


----------



## karaluszek

zzjing said:


> I actually contacted Professor Johnston about some mistakes I have found in the new English edition and asked a few questions, and got a nice reply from him.


Excellent idea. I was going to suggest contacting Bill Johnston


----------



## anthox

Poland91pl said:


> I can’t agree with Anthox. The negation clearly seems to be missing here. Without the negation it means the opposite rather than what it really does.



I'm willing to defer to a native speaker's interpretation on the basis of the sentence's grammar itself, as I am basing my understanding primarily on the context of the statement. A negated statement doesn't seem to fit the context. But as jasio said, this hinges on an interpretation of how Kelvin is viewing Sartorius's behavior here in light of his general behavior throughout the story. It's been several years since I've read the whole novel, so my recollection is not fresh, I just recall Sartorius generally grating on Kelvin's nerves. 

I would certainly be interested to hear Bill Johnston's take, if you happen to contact him, zzjing.


----------



## zzjing

anthox said:


> I'm willing to defer to a native speaker's interpretation on the basis of the sentence's grammar itself, as I am basing my understanding primarily on the context of the statement. A negated statement doesn't seem to fit the context. But as jasio said, this hinges on an interpretation of how Kelvin is viewing Sartorius's behavior here in light of his general behavior throughout the story. It's been several years since I've read the whole novel, so my recollection is not fresh, I just recall Sartorius generally grating on Kelvin's nerves.
> 
> I would certainly be interested to hear Bill Johnston's take, if you happen to contact him, zzjing.


I'm pretty sure I know what he thinks about this one (I mean which one is the correct interpretation, not the reasoning behind it). He is quite busy, so I don't want to bother him with any further questions.

Thanks everyone for responding.


----------

