Translations

"The atmosphere of Torre di Venere remains unpleasant in the memory. From the first moment the air of the place made us uneasy, we felt irritable, on edge; then at the end came the shocking business of Cipolla, that dreadful being who seemed to incorporate, in so fateful and so humanly impressive a way, all the peculiar evilness of the situation as a whole."
Pure Thomas Mann.
But it isn't "pure" Thomas Mann; it's a translation from the German of one of his stories ("Mario and the Magician").
I am reminded of this matter of translation of literature by comments Michael Gove made in The Times yesterday. "I've always harboured the thought," he wrote, "that reading great literature in translation involves a lot of nuance, a sacrifice of subtlety, which few will admit to."
Well I won't admit to it in the case of the works of Thomas Mann because the only versions I have of his books are those translated by H.T.Lowe-Porter. And to my mind she is perfect. I can't tell if her translation is good but I do know that she has always made Mann a major literary artist to me.
I once had a part-time job reading scripts for the BBC. I would read a play by someone who had sent it in on spec, write comments about it and get a small fee (a couple of pounds) for the work.
I got fed up with it. Eventually I sent in a written comment that I had written in what I supposed Thomas Mann' style was - or maybe H.T.Lowe-Porter's.
I never received another script to read after that.