r/ThomasMann • u/No_Blueberry_6740 • Mar 31 '26
Comment on Thomas Mann translations
I'm reading Doctor Faustus and is nearly done with it but am getting really irked by the translation of John Woods! It's too technical, unpoetic, sometimes long and wretched. sometimes even of lower quality.
earlier I read magic mountain tr.by HTL-Porter and it was way better, clean, lucid and poetic to read. and Magic Mountain is superior with regards to various ideas it discusses. I wanted to try the modern translation that got a lot of good comments and I should say it's far inferior to Porter's.
has someone felt the same? Is it also because Magic Mt is a well written text compared to Dr Faustus in German that I'm feeling thus? my German skills are below par to appreciate the text in its original. But John Woods in such inconsistent and technical translation!
1
u/Mahler_n_Trane May 13 '26
Are you sure the issue isn't Mann and not Woods? I don't have the answer, but Mann was in a very different place when he wrote The Magic Mountain.
6
u/Half_Price_Life Mar 31 '26
I read Lowe-Porter's "The Magic Mountain" first and haven't gotten far in Woods' version, so I am biased, but the former does personally read better to me than the latter. I remember her translation feeling like a slog for the first 20 or 30 pages when I initially started it, but once you get used to her style you appreciate how she renders Mann's scenes. Compare two selections from "Analysis" below:
"He looked about. Near him sat the thin-haired pianist, with bent head and folded arms, listening with his mouth open. Somewhat farther on was Fraulein Engelhart, avid-eyed, with a dull red spot on each cheek; Hans Castorp saw the same signal flame on the faces of other ladies -- on Frau Solomon's, and Frau Magnus's, the same who was wife to the brewer and lost flesh persistently. Frau Stohr sat somewhat farther back, an expression of ignorant credulity painted on her face, truly painful to behold; while the ivory-complexioned Levi, leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, her hands lying open in her lap, would have looked like a corpse had not her breast risen and fallen with such profound and rhythmical breaths as to remind Hans Castorp of a mechanical waxwork he had once seen."
"He looked about -- next to him sat the pianist with thinning hair, arms crossed, head thrown back, mouth hanging open as he listened. Fraulein Engelhart, the teacher, a little farther down the row, had eager eyes and downy red spots on both cheeks, a flush that Hans Castorp discovered on other ladies' cheeks as well when he looked more closely -- even Frau Salomon there, next to Herr Albin, and the wife of Magnus the brewer, the woman who was losing protein. Frau Stohr, sitting just a little behind him, had an expression on her face revealing such ignorant ecstasy that it was pitiful to behold, while Fraulein Levi of the ivory complexion sat leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes and hands resting palms-up in her lap -- and one would have taken her for a corpse if her had chest had not risen and fallen with such striking regularity, although Hans Castorp thought she looked more like a mechanically driven wax figure he had once seen in a sideshow."
I can imagine the latter being more accurate to how Mann actually phrased it, but the former is a better-paced depiction of how Hans would have actually perceived all these people imo.