hi! i liked your grantaire quote & was wondering which translation of les miserables its from? thx!
I’m one of the dirty rotten sinners who read Denny’s translation (though in my defense I’d bought it long before I had any idea a fandom existed with Opinions about translations; it was cheap and I figured why not)
Anyway, this ask got me curious so I decided to snoop a bit and see what some other versions of this quote look like. (Obviously the entire segment it’s from is way bigger, this is Grantaire’s long speech in 4.12.2 and it’s fucking gorgeous, one of my favourites, this is just a nice bite size quote that I enjoyed.)
So the Denny’s quote I’d originally posted was:
“when I think of all this I can’t help feeling that God is not rich. He has the appearance of riches, certainly, but I can feel his embarrassment. He gives us a revolution the way a bankrupt merchant gives a ball. We must not judge any god by appearances. I see a shoddy universe beyond the splendour of the sky.”
Here’s what they have from the Hapgood translation:
“when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty gives a ball. God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe.”
and the original French is:
“à voir tant de misère partout, je soupçonne que Dieu n'est pas riche. Il a de l'apparence, c'est vrai, mais je sens la gêne. Il donne une révolution, comme un négociant dont la caisse est vide donne un bal. Il ne faut pas juger des dieux sur l'apparence. Sous la dorure du ciel j'entrevois un univers pauvre.”
tbh this is the really frustrating thing about reading in translation?? because no translation is ever perfect and I always end up wishing I could combine like… the best bits of three different version jfc. As a whole, for this specific quote, I actually prefer Denny’s (though trust me, Denny fucks up a lot through out the rest of the book, no one mutilates fun puns like Denny does).
Hapgood gets the first point for accuracy though with his “when I see so much misery”. Denny didn’t really need to bother trying to make that more succinct, “when I think of all this” feels kinda wishy-washy and hey, this is Hugo, it never hurts to really drive the misery home.
However I like “gêne” being translated as “embarrassed” a lot more than “hard up” – it feels a little closer to the intended meaning imo, and it’s way less clunky to read. Plus embarrassed is just such a… stark, uncomfortable word to attach to a god and I love it, and it feels so Grantaire. This isn’t just God being “hard-up” or “broke”, this is him being shamed by it and trying to hide it. That has so much emotion and complexity to it and I fucking love it.
Hapgood’s translation of “a tradesman whose money-box is empty” is definitely a more accurate translation, but again it comes across as rather stilted in English and I’m a little :/ about it. I don’t know if I dislike it but I’m not sure I’m crazy for it either. That’s one of the fine lines when translating from French, right? They have a more drawn out language and shove less random bullshit together, but when it’s directly translated into English that way it can feel a bit cumbersome. Bankrupt says the same thing without making me slog to the end of a sentence.
I hate that Hapgood changed “dieux” into “God”, singular. Casually referring to multiple gods just feels so right for a Classics-loving cynic like Grantaire. It’s so flippant – he’s shuffling the Christian god in with any number of pagan god like nbd. Like, why would you even bother changing that?
I do like that Hapgood stuck with gilding, which is just a lovely word, but Denny is technically right in saying sky rather than heaven, so point to him for alliteration, I guess. Any version though, this a lovely sentence to read.
Anyways, this is more than you asked for anon but enjoy me rambling about translation differences. Also thank you, I’d never read the original French of that scene and it’s a nice one so I’m glad I had an excuse to do so.
