Literary Noli Me Tángere by José Rizal

[sun surfer]

AKA The Social Cancer, AKA An Eagle Flight, AKA Friars and Filipinos, AKA Touch Me Not, AKA The Lost Eden

This is the MR Literary Club selection for November 2014. Whether you've already read it or would like to, feel free to start or join in the conversation at any time! Guests are also always welcome.


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• MR Library epub version uploaded by crich70 • MR Library kindle version uploaded by crich70
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So, what are your thoughts on it?

[sun surfer]

Here is a blog post that discusses four different English translations - http://stitchestm.blogspot.com/2007/...f-noli-me.html

I notice it's missing the translation by Frank Gannett, though his is an abridgement so perhaps this is purposely so.

[crich70]

I notice that (at Kobo at least) there are apparently even more variations on price of a copy than there are translations.

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Here is a blog post that discusses four different English translations - http://stitchestm.blogspot.com/2007/...f-noli-me.html

I notice it's missing the translation by Frank Gannett, though his is an abridgement so perhaps this is purposely so.

I generally don't make a big deal about which translation is better than an other. Something is changed in every translation. So I will go with the free version no available as an ebook here at MR. Thank you Crich70.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I generally don't make a big deal about which translation is better than an other. Something is changed in every translation. So I will go with the free version no available as an ebook here at MR. Thank you Crich70.

You're welcome Hamlet53. I don't really go into a lot of searching to find 'the translation' either. Of course most books I read were 1st published in English to begin with but I figure why spend $ for a translation if there is a free, legal translation already available.

[paola]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Here is a blog post that discusses four different English translations - http://stitchestm.blogspot.com/2007/...f-noli-me.html

I notice it's missing the translation by Frank Gannett, though his is an abridgement so perhaps this is purposely so.

thank you - still deciding on which version to use my 35% discount on!

[paola]

In case someone hasn't settled on a version yet, here is an excerpt from a 1997 review of Soledad Lacson-Locsin translation by Benedict Anderson in the London Review of Books:

Which brings us to the present translation, more or less timed for the centenary of Rizal’s execution. A few years ago, Doreen Fernandez, one of the Philippines’ most distinguished scholars, deeply disturbed by the corruption of Rizal’s texts, went in search of a compatriot linguistically capable of making a reliable translation. She eventually found one in Soledad Lacson-Locsin, an elderly upper-class woman born early enough in this century for Rizal’s Spanish – by no means the same as 1880s Madrid Spanish – to be second nature to her. The old lady completed new translations of both Noli Me Tangere and its even more savage 1891 sequel El Filibusterismo just before she died.

In most respects, it is a huge advance over previous translations, handsomely laid out and with enough footnotes to be helpful without being pettifogging. But the barbarous American influence is still there, to say nothing of the basic transformation of consciousness that created, for the first time, within a year or so of Rizal’s execution, a national idea of ‘the’ Filipino.

In Rizal’s novels the Spanish words filipina and filipino still mean what they had traditionally meant – i.e. creoles, people of ‘pure’ Spanish descent who were born in the Philippines. This stratum was, in accordance with traditional imperial practice, wedged in between peninsulares (native Spaniards) and mestizos, chinos and indios. The novels breathe nationalism of the classical sort, but this nationalism has to do with love of patria, not with race: ‘Filipino’ in the 20th-century ethno-racial sense never appears. But by 1898, when Apolinario Mabini began to write – two years after Rizal’s execution – the old meaning had vanished. Hence the fundamental difficulty of the present translation is that filipino/filipina almost always appear in the anachronistic form of Filipino/Filipina: for example, ‘el bello sexo está representado por españolas peninsulares y filipinas’ (‘the fair sex is represented by peninsular and creole Spanish women’) is rendered absurdly as ‘the fair sex being represented by Spanish peninsular ladies and Filipinas’.

The other problem is a flattening of the political and linguistic complexity of the original, no doubt because Mrs Lacson-Locsin was born just too late to have had an élite Spanish-era schooling. When Rizal had the racist Franciscan friar Padre Damaso say contemptuously, ‘cualquier bata de la escuela lo sabe,’ he mockingly inserted the Tagalog bata in place of the Spanish muchacho to show how years in the colony had unconsciously creolised the friar’s language. This effect disappears when Mrs Lacson-Locsin translates the words as ‘any schoolchild knows that.’ Rizal quotes three lines of the much-loved 19th-century Tagalog poet Francisco Balthazar in the original, without translating it into Spanish, to create the necessary intercultural jarring; but quoting the poem in the same language as the text surrounding it erases the effect. The ironical chapter heading ‘Tasio el loco ó el filósofo’ shrinks to ‘Tasio’, and one would not suspect that the chapter heading ‘A Good Day is Foretold by the Morning’ was originally in Italian. The translator also has difficulties with Rizal’s use of untranslated Latin.

There are a few prophets who are honoured in their own country, and José Rizal is among them. But the condition of this honour has for decades been his unavailability. Mrs Lacson-Locsin has changed this by giving the great man back his sad and seditious laughter. And it is badly needed – if one thinks of all those ‘social parasites: the pests or dregs which God in His infinite goodness created and very fondly breeds in Manila’.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Thank you, sun surfer and paola. Your information on the translations is very interesting.

I have also discovered that some editions contain an extra chapter. Rizal removed Chapter 25, "Elías and Salomé," before publication. The José Rizal National Centennial Commission included this chapter as an appendix when reprinting the text in 1961.

I'm still undecided which translation to pick. The 1961 translation by Leon Ma. Guerrero is available to me through my Oyster subscription. However, I noticed that it is missing the epigraph, "To My Country," which explains why Derbyshire titled his translation The Social Cancer. It also inserts the missing chapter into the table of contents as Chapter 25 rather than keeping it as an appendix. I am tempted by the Penguin translation. It has a great introduction, and I like the extra notes. I also downloaded the Spanish version for fun, although my Spanish text comprehension is not good enough to read the whole novel stand-alone without assistance from an English translation and dictionary.

I have a little time to decide. I must finish the current book I am reading before I start this one.

Originally Posted by paola

In case someone hasn't settled on a version yet, here is an excerpt from a 1997 review of Soledad Lacson-Locsin translation by Benedict Anderson in the London Review of Books:

Wow, thank you Paola. I may be forced to rethink my choice of translations does not matter policy.

I found these links for the Soledad Lacson-Locsin translation:

University of Hawai'i Press:

Noli Me Tangere alone for $8.00 (paperback)

or

El Filibusterismo and Noli Me Tangere both for $26.00 (paperback)

[paola]

I am probably oversensitive to translation due to having read English classics in the Italian translation as a kid, only to discover that the original version was far better, sometimes being dismayed at translations that were simply wrong.

In the case of Noli, I still suspect an Italian translation might have been a safer bet, but I could not find ebook versions (well, not legal ones!), and the hardcopy would take forever, so eventually ventured to India for the Penguin edition

[issybird]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

AKA The Social Cancer, AKA An Eagle Flight, AKA Friars and Filipinos, AKA Touch Me Not

AKA The Lost Eden, also, the title of the first American edition (1961) of the Guerroro translation, as I discovered today when I went looking at the local university library. I wanted a backup for the audio/ebook app I bought at iTunes, which likes to crash - and I prefer not to read on my iPod if I can help it.

Thanks also to Paola. I have been considering picking up the Augenbraum translation; I wish Lacson-Locsin were available as an ebook! Generally, apologies to Hamlet, my inner cheapskate can justify modern translations.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I've done some further research this afternoon. I've decided to go with the Penguin version translated by Augenbraum. I like the extra notes and the way the translation compares to the Spanish text. Google Benedict Anderson's Spectre of Comparisons for additional reasons such as bowdlerization of political and religious elements that caused me to opt against the Guererro translation.

[sun surfer]

Thank you both paola and Bookworm_Girl for the further translations info.

The Lacson-Locsin version intrigued me from the start and paola's post only furthered my interest, but why is this version not an ebook? I don't mind pbooks if necessary, but with other good translations available electronically I've opted to not read this version.

I tried samples of both the Guerrero and Augenbraum and found them both well readable, different yet still somewhat similar (at least in the first chapter which I sampled). In that neither seemed superior, I was leaning towards the Guerrero - especially since I could buy it for substantially less than the Augenbraum. But Bookworm_Girl's post has swayed me at the last second, so I've just downloaded the Augenbraum with a sigh and a tear shed to the extra money floating away into the ethersphere.

Originally Posted by issybird

AKA The Lost Eden, also, the title of the first American edition (1961) of the Guerroro translation, as I discovered today when I went looking at the local university library. I wanted a backup for the audio/ebook app I bought at iTunes, which likes to crash - and I prefer not to read on my iPod if I can help it.

Thanks also to Paola. I have been considering picking up the Augenbraum translation; I wish Lacson-Locsin were available as an ebook! Generally, apologies to Hamlet, my inner cheapskate can justify modern translations.

Thank you, issybird. I've updated the first post with the alternate title; the various translators (or publishers) have definitely been free with the title over the years, hm?

[Bookworm_Girl]

It's a matter of personal preference probably. The Penguin edition was worth the price difference to me for the extra notes. Guererro wrote his translation as if Rizal was writing in English for the modern generation as his audience. I prefer to have some of the original Spanish and Tagalog words mixed in with English. Guererro also wrote his translation to have the necessary annotations built into the text rather then use footnotes. Some may find that easier to read. It was obvious from the first paragraph when I compared the various translations and the Spanish version and that's what put me off it.

Here is an example for anyone undecided.

From Derbyshire's translation:

On the last of October Don Santiago de los Santos popularly known as Capitan Tiago, gave a dinner. In spite of the fact that, contrary to his usual custom, he had made the announcement only that afternoon, it was already the sole topic of conversation in Binondo and adjacent districts, and even in the Walled City, for at that time Capitan Tiago was considered one for the most hospitable of men, and it was well known that his house, like his country, shut its doors against nothing except commerce and all new or bold ideas.

From Augenbraum's translation:

Toward the end of October, Don Santiago de los Santos, who was generally known as Captain Tiago, gave a dinner party that, despite its having been announced only that afternoon, which was not his usual practice, was the topic of every conversation in Binondo and neighboring areas, and even as far as Intramuros. In those days Captain Tiago was considered the most liberal of men, and it was known that the doors of his house, like those of his country, were closed to no one but tradesmen or perhaps a new or daring idea.

From Quererro's translation, you can see extra info on time and place and the meaning of the title Captain:

Don Santiago de los Santos was giving a dinner party on evening towards the end of October in the 1880‘s. Although, contrary to his usual practice, he had let it be known only on the afternoon of the same day, it was soon the topic of conversation in Binondo, where he lived, in other districts of Manila, and even in the Spanish walled city of Intramuros. Don Santiago was better known as Capitan Tiago—the rank was not military but political, and indicated that he had once been the native mayor of a town. In those days he had a reputation for lavishness. It was well known that his house, like his country, never closed its doors—except, of course, to trade and any idea that was new or daring.

From Google translate of the Spanish original text:

In late October, Don Santiago de los Santos, popularly known by the name of Captain Tiago, gave a dinner, which, despite having announced only that afternoon against his custom, was already the subject of every conversation in Binondo, in other suburbs, and even in Intramuros. Captain Tiago was then in the most pompous man, and he knew his house, like his country, did not close the door to anyone, unless it be trade or any new and bold idea.

I have discovered that the Lacson-Locsin version is available to me (in paper) as a request from the extended resources option in my local library system. I will be going with that as the alternate would be the Derbyshire edition available at MR as an ebook. I am a cheapskate so paper is fine with me. My local library system does not have any edition in any form.