| Interview 1: Translating Karl May (1) | |
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How Durch die Wüste Became The Shadow of the Padishah |
> Interview 1: Intro | Part 1 | Part 2
An interview with translator Michael Michalak about his translation of the German author Karl May's 120-year-old “Oriental Odyssey” into modern English.
Q: Why do you think that Karl May has never caught on in the U.S. or the rest of the English-speaking world?
MICHALAK: This is, of course, a difficult question to answer, as many opinions have been voiced on this very subject. The problems range from historical inaccuracies to poor representations of the Karl May travel narratives. Certainly the earlier English translations were rather poor and did not bring the characters of these tales to life in the same manner as the German originals. But this is only part of the problem.
Translator Michael Michalak
The fact that these tales were started but never completed in English also had a lot to do with the fact that they never gained acceptance in the United States. But in order to truly understand why Karl May has failed to gain the same wide acceptance in the U.S. as he did in Germany, one has to understand the people of these two nations. The German people possess a desire to travel, a “Wanderlust” that they're rarely able to translate into reality. To the German people, these tales represent an escape from their mundane existence and their social rigidity.
Added to this, the Karl May hero is a kind of superman, a person who through his learning and extensive knowledge is able to extricate himself from all kinds of adverse situations. This hero is the kind of person that almost every German aspires to be. So for Germans, Karl May represented this hero, an alter ego, a person who did those things that most people only dream of doing. Americans, on the other hand, actually had the opportunity to explore their country and to them the wonders of their own land did not evoke the same excitement. And May's Middle Eastern tales were not of great interest because, as far as I have observed, Americans seem to be rather inward looking and not at all interested in matters that occur outside of their own borders. So yes, the quality of the previous translations and cultural factors do indeed play a great role in how Karl May's works have been accepted in the past. My personal goal is to make Karl May available to modern English language readers and, for the first time in 120 years, publish a complete translation of the “Oriental Odyssey” based on the original serialized version.
Why did you choose to translate the serialized text rather than the edited text from the Fehsenfeld publications?
We believed that the volumes published by Fehsenfeld, although reworked by Karl May himself, were no longer the product of his original inspiration. Rather, and this is most clearly shown in the Oriental Odyssey series, Karl May was bound by the whims of the publisher. That is to say, the number of pages in the book became more important than what the story contained. By using the serialized version, we were also providing the reader with something new. The Hausschatz series of the Oriental Odyssey was published between 1881 and 1888. It was not until 1891 that the “Collected Travel Adventure” series was published by Fehsenfeld. Our translation is thus based on the purest source of these narratives and it was our, and still is my hope to bring a new perspective to the English language readers of Karl May's works.
Where did the title “Shadow of the Padishah” come from?
The original manuscript was entitled “Giölgeda padishanün” - or literally “In the Shadow of the Padishah.” The “Padishah,” the Turkish sultan, granted a travel document, something like a passport, that assured the holder safe passage within the Turkish realm. This title was abandoned in 1891 when the serialized epic was republished in book form. After that date, these narratives became known as “Durch die Wüste” and “Durchs wilde Kurdistan.” But when one compares the original with the book published later on, one discovers that “Durch die Wüste” is not the entire tale of “Giölgeda padishanün” - that in fact the first book consists of only 24.5 instead of the original 36 parts that make up the whole story. The remaining parts of the first tale of this Oriental Odyssey are contained in the second published book of this series along with the tale entitled “Travel Adventures in Kurdistan.” When I planned the publishing of our translation, I was faced with a problem, namely that the artificial division of the tale imposed by the book version occurred right in the middle of some very interesting events. I noted that the tale could be divided in a more sensible manner if it was broken after the 20th part - that is after the end of the “Desert Battle” - and that the second volume could then begin with a new scene and new adventures with the “Devil Worshippers” starting in Mossul. Thus we divided our translation work in this manner, making it possible to present the reader with a more satisfying and complete tale, even though it would still be divided into two distinct parts.
So there is actually no one original German edition that equals your English translation.
Right. It's a combination of two German Karl May books, derived from the original serialization. We opted to publish the “The Shadow of the Padishah” as the first of two books in a series which we have given the more accurate main title of “Oriental Odyssey.” “Travel Adventures in Kurdistan,” based on the original manuscript, will become “Oriental Odyssey III“ and so on for the remaining serialized narratives.
What aspects of your Karl May translation work were the most fun?
The most fun was derived from the research that was necessary to render Karl May's narratives into readable English. The original texts we worked from were written more than 120 years ago and the German language certainly has undergone a number of changes since then. But it was not just the language. It was also the idioms, the references, the turns of phrases and the colloquial tidbits that not only presented a challenge, but also an opportunity to learn something new.
And the most frustrating?
Most frustrating of all was the terseness of the dialog. How could one preserve it without ambiguity and yet render a translation that not only adhered to the original but also did not force us to abridge the text. Clearly it was a challenge which, at times, led to many hours of in-depth discussions and research.
In your “Trials and Tribulations” article, you mention the “two camps of Western lore“ (James Fenimore Cooper vs May). I was not aware of that before. Can you elaborate on this - and did it have any influence on your translation work?
Although he died just nine years after Karl May was born, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) wrote a number of American Indian tales which competed with Karl May's American heroes. Because Cooper was an American, his stories were considered more authentic than Karl May's tales and this, of course, led to a number of arguments between the adherents of each group. Yes, my translation work is in part due to this friction, but only insofar as no good English translation of Karl May's work existed for a fair comparison.
NEXT > Interview 1: Part 2 - Intro | Part 1 | Part 2
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