Christopher Plummer on Cyrano de Bergerac (Part 37 of 44)
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Christopher Plummer on the various nuances of the text in English and French.
Interviewed by R.H. Thomson on October 6, 2007 in Toronto. Filming location courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel. Generously supported by The William and Nona Heaslip Foundation.
Quelle culture ce Plummer, j'aimerais bien le voir jouer Cyrano.
Christopher Plummer was the greatest Cyrano in an English language production that I have ever seen. I saw him in the 1973 Broadway musical production, for which Plummer justifiably won the Tony Award. He was superb.
I was lucky enough to see his Cyrano in the musical three times and every time he left the audience -- not crying -- but sobbing. In the days when a standing ovation was a rarity, the ushers told me he got one every night. His Cyrano was the greatest stage performance I ever saw (and I saw Olivier, Schofield, Burton, etc.)
as did I....devastatingly heartbreaking...and Leigh Beery????? heaven.
2:42 Now wait a minute. Can that possibly be right (?) That it's IMPOSSIBLE to translate something from French to English (?) What would that mean (?) It would mean that French embodies certain experiences that it's impossible to embody in English. Unless you take the position that every experience is absolutely unique (which undermines the very idea of communication . . .), that seems really pretty unlikely . . .
He is talking about the sound of the words, not their meaning. Literally translating verse that rhymes in French into verse that rhymes in English is impossible. Chez dieu is two syllables and can be spoken as one word. But the literal translation--the house of god--with four syllables sounds clumsy and definitely not poetic.
Each language has its own sound and rhythm. To convey the same meaning when translating, it may be necessary to use very different words than would be used in a literal translation-- words that almost surely will not have the rhythm of the original.
There’s the saying : Traduttore traditore, which means the translator is a traitor. If you are translating something technical, it’s not that difficult. You just have to know the correspondent technical term in the other language and the meaning is clear. But translating a piece of literature is VERY tricky because words convey so much more than one layer of meaning. They are drenched in the culture they come from. They also have nuances that only a native speaker can totally grasp. So if you translate word for word you are doing a huge disservice to the original piece. But finding the right term, or turn of phrase, or expression, to convey something that is so very ingrained in the original culture of the author, is often impossible. Truly bilingual people know that because sometimes you want to express something you are thinking in one language and convey it in the other language and words fail you. My silly common every day example is the word moist, as in “moist cake”, I find no EXACT equivalent in French (and I’m originally French speaking). I know, I know, it would me “moelleux” technically but it’s not quite exactly the same.......
So I get what he is saying 100% and I completely agree.
I agree completely with Dr. Ayn Rand's criticism of Plummer's "Cyrano". Mr. Ferrer's was certainly superior.
great, fabulous, outstanding one of the 3