… have had a disagreement.
But it’s not anything to do with our personal life at all – it’s to do with this book. And the only reason really that I mention it is to illustrate the difficulties under which this translation is proceeding.
And it’s no wonder that no commercial translator would undertake the job. Having this done for the weekend is impossible and I realised that a while ago.
Part of the plot hinges around an anagram, and without this anagram the story can’t proceed.
And it’s all very well doing a translation, but to keep the translation down some kind of narrow pathway to represent the author’s literary channels and literary thought is complicated enough, but when there’s a key anagram to be thrown in at a crucial point, it’s snot, aye.
So after much binding in the marsh, I came up with an absolutely belting anagram for the English translation of my phrase, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite correspond with the literary sense that Marianne is trying to convey.
I’ve spent all morning trying to find an appropriate phrase (which is required to be used in a considerable part of this book) just so that its anagram would be a powerful one. But it’s not suitable, and that’s that.
So it’s back to the drawing board, Cecil.
Yes, I hadn’t realised what I was letting myself in for when I volunteered for this task. It’s certainly … errr … challenging.
And I suppose that it’s that in itself that is doing me good.
