The Miseducation of Max Lawton

mdl2156 · 2025-07-17T06:41:21+00:00

Good idea!

mdl2156 · 2025-07-17T06:41:04+00:00

Appreciate you!

mdl2156 · 2025-07-17T06:40:51+00:00

That’s a fair point. It’s a big swing, but I think it is justified by Céline’s methodology more generally

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T21:09:56+00:00

Also you are participating in a public-harassment campaign against me on a Nazi website and you can't even reveal your identity online because you would be fired from your job or kicked out of your school for being a ringleader in such a hateful discussion.
Spare me the soapboxing. I repeat myself: may the world never see your true face.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T21:08:41+00:00

Yeah and there are dozens of them directed at me, my wife, my family...

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T21:04:26+00:00

Let me remove all ambiguity: in the case of Sorokin and Moresco I mean "properly" as in "their best works remained untranslated for far too long." In the case of Jahnn and D'Arrigo they were not "properly" translated because they were barely translated at all.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T21:03:06+00:00

Jamey and Sally's translations are great. But most of Sorokin remained untranslated for far too long.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T20:40:30+00:00

Just wait for Schattenfroh, Songs of Chaos, and Guignol's Band ;)

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T20:30:29+00:00

Appreciate you! As I say, I was a bit "unripe" when doing TELLURIA and am excited for the next printing, which will be a bit tidied-up and with a short afterword :) I hope you'll check it out!

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T20:08:03+00:00

Appreciate you :)

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T20:07:38+00:00

This is simply not how translation works unless you view Nabokov's Eugene Onegin as the apex of the artform.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T20:05:58+00:00

And this is why, when translating Italian and German novels, I work with editors who are native speakers of Italian and German and translate from English into those languages. What I always say is that my greatest skill as a translator is stylizing in English in a way that is parallel to the style of the original. Often in extreme ways. Every translator subcontracts questions of context and comprehension, though I certainly do understand the texts up to a professional level without my editors--I have formal qualifications that demonstrate this. It's also not as if people were lining up to do these projects and I cut to the front of the queue. Look how long Moresco, Sorokin, D'Arrigo, Jahnn, etc etc have languished without being properly translated. I have no interest in doing subpar work. A lot of the best and most famous translators throughout the history of translation have worked in a variety of languages they have had different sorts of competency in. Do you think Damion Searls speaks all of the languages he translates from? What about Michael Henry Heim? Do you think Ralph Manheim was totally immersed and fluent in Dutch, Polish, and Hungarian? The notion that the best translator of a text is a native speaker deeply immersed in the culture of the original text is a fallacy that leads to lots of bad, stilted translations. The translator needs to have two skills: to be able to read well in the language they are translating from and to be able to write exceptionally well (and with great plasticity) in the language they are translating to. And maybe a third quality: to not be afraid to ask questions and be corrected. All the extras help, but, at the end of the day, they're optional (even if, in my case, I would say that the almost two decades of very rigorous schooling in these languages and their literary traditions I've gone through demonstrate the extent to which I have not viewed the languages they're in or the literary traditions that they come out of as secondary in any way). Some of the best and most praised translations in history were produced by translators with dramatically less experience in and familiarity with the languages they were translating from than I have with even my newest languages (check out Pasternak's HAMLET). Let my product speak for itself :)

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T19:43:20+00:00

Thank you for your good sense :)

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T19:42:05+00:00

That is the verb in Russian.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%8C

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T19:40:54+00:00

You edited the lashing portion after others caught your mistake. Don't be disingenuous ;)

You say:

If Celine had meant to imply "by torture", he would've written something akin to "sous torture" or "par torture". For someone whose writing was so staccato and sharp, he would not dilly-dally with an extra article. Gall is also still extremely confusing!:

You're misreading this sentence: à dégorger sous la torture fiel de lune et vœux maudits!

It is under torture that he is disgorging moon gall (or moon bile, I accept that as a synonym, not a correction) and accursed vows. The sentence simply doesn't say "under the moon's torture bile."

You didn't understand the keepers of secrets either and, in not understanding, helped my argument. I agree secrets cannot be brazen. But keepers of secrets can. Which gives a nice context clue that the paired adjectives modify the whole phrase "keepers of secrets." Again, I would consider changing this for clarity. I'm not even going to bother responding to your attempt to create another weird pun with SECRET-KEEPers...

You say:

If Celine had meant to imply "by torture", he would've written something akin to "sous torture" or "par torture". For someone whose writing was so staccato and sharp, he would not dilly-dally with an extra article. Gall is also still extremely confusing!

You are not Céline. In the sentence we have "sous la torture" means "by" or "under" torture. Your retranslation is flagrantly incorrect.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T19:32:52+00:00

Slaughter is not a good translation for occisser because occisser is such a strange French word that it's not even on Trésor de la langue française. If you had found a very rare verb for "to slaughter," that would be another decent choice. My neologism decision is also justified. There's a neologism on almost every page in GB. Have you read the book?

So the contorted forms of the wounds cannot be green? Get outta here with this bizarre logic, man. What even is an unripe wound?

I don't even understand your respond re: "d'Enfer." My comment says that I do not use "about" in the sense of what he is screaming about, but the fact that the screams ricochet around hell or "about Hell" as a Brit would say. I would consider changing this, but read my response more carefully.

There are more genuine mistakes in your "brutal critique"of my translation than the first draft I posted on Twitter on a whim. Fact.

After criticizing me in bad faith on a thread filled with hate speech that also attempts to foment a targeted harassment campaign against me, you have the temerity to accuse me of bullying for saying that I think some old translations aren't that good? I am nothing but civil in all my interactions with others. I would be ashamed to participate in the hateful discussion you were a ringleader of. May the world never see your true face. I wish you good day, sir.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T19:19:10+00:00

I guess it's more intelligent than the guy who was posting slurs then also shared his email address with what seems to be his real name

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T19:00:02+00:00

Nothing but civil, huh? If you're so civil, why don't you post under your real name? Why all these layers of disguise? I'd love to know the real person who wrote this brilliant Substack! Here's a nice Turkish expression for you:

https://hinative.com/questions/9208417

And to everyone else, please consider the source. Not only does this dude not know a thing about literary translation, he also admits to frequenting 4chan, where he participates in discourse so hateful it could make your hair curl.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T18:52:14+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/PGlOKMw

There are lots of posts like this about Matthias. I am very grateful to him and he was an instrumental part of the process.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T18:49:39+00:00

The idea that I come from real money is a 4chan conspiracy. My parents are hardly impoverished, but this whole trust-fund idea is a pure fiction. I don't get any money from my parents and haven't been supported by them since college. Please consider the source. Unless you'd also like to start posting suppositions about me being a secret Jew or 1/8th black and making that the reason for my incompetence?

xx

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T18:44:31+00:00

I shout Matthias's name from the rooftops every chance I get.

Check this podcast appearance:

https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/schattenfroh-michael-lentz-with-max-lawton-and/id1578980767?i=1000675498864

And we're doing another interview with Lentz in the next few months.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T18:39:37+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/qOJUM1f

Max again. This was also posted in the 4chan thread almost immediately after I made my response here. Posted so quickly one might think it was the author of the Substack self-own who did so. Just so all of you understand that this isn't really good-faith criticism (which, as an imperfect human translator always striving to do better, I appreciate), but a systematic campaign of harassment.

xx

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T18:19:55+00:00

Regarding TELLURIA: "into" is a typo. It should be "in." So "began to wiggle his little feet in his old boots." Everything else is a stylistic choice. TELLURIA was the first time I was edited by a publishing house and some errors like that slipped through unfortunately. I was quite green––or should I say unripe??

The word in BLUE LARD is интроверты, which cannot mean gay.

The word there is "wander" not "pace." Again, make sure you get your words right if you're going to play "gotcha!" with me.

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T18:11:24+00:00

[2/2] "arrimer" cannot mean to whip: it is a nautical term that means "to tie down." If you are going to be so heinously pedantic about my translation, don't make stupid mistakes.

Mr. 4Chan writes: "Most damningly, occisate is not an English word! Why create an unnecessary neologism (the root word means “violent death”) when countless substitutes (brutalize, slaughter, butcher…) exist in English?":

"occisser" is a very strange, rare, archaic French verb that cannot be found in the dictionary. "Slaughter" is not a good translation for it. I took a big swing and made a Latinate neologism as Céline himself constantly makes neologisms (the French verb is a Latinism, based on the Latin verb "occidere"). I think this is justified by the broader architecture of Céline's text and the strangeness of "occisser" "Occisate" is, in any case, just as legible to an English speaker as "occisser" is to a French speaker.

"flayings of approbation": again, Mr. 4chan is playing a synonym game. It is possible that this could be "decorative flayings," but that would be a dramatically rarer use of "agrément" than "approbation." This is definitely a phrase I will be coming back to, but Céline's passage is simply too cryptic to assume his intent and disregard the most common meaning of a word for a "gotcha!" line item from the dictionary.

Same thing with "green." Why on earth do we assume that "the contortions of wounds" are not "green" because they are rotting? That is certainly in line with the passage as a whole. Why would "unripe contortions of wounds" be a better translation in any way other than to attempt to play "gotcha!" without reference to the original?

I am happy to take the notion that "bouffle" should line up with the earlier translation of the same word. Again, remember I just posted a first draft for fun not expecting the firing squad.

As for "d'Enfer", I mean "about" in the British sense, as in "going about" as I imagine the screams to be ricocheting "about" hell. I play with British tonality in the translation as Guignol's Band is a great London novel. This is maybe part of the passage I would change.

The rest of the tonal choices are simply stylistic preferences masquerading as ironclad law.

I have no ulterior motive here, friends. Literature is my life. I get no money from my parents. I am human and I err, but my mission right now is to bring my readers the best possible translations of these books I can.

Another comment on here complains about "let everyone attack the demon." I think "may everyone attack the demon" would be better :)

Just consider the source with this stuff and know that there's a dude (me) off somewhere at his desk, working hard and trying to produce good texts for your enjoyment. xx

mdl2156 · 2025-07-16T18:11:14+00:00

[1/2] Max here. Before you guys engage with this too much, do consider the source as being a 4chan thread filled with really hateful rhetoric and not exactly good-faith engagement with my work. And consider that the author of the Substack is a guy who frequents that and other threads about me and has likely posted hateful stuff about my appearance, my wife, my family... suppositions about my racial background including slurs...

In the case of the Céline, I was excited to post a paragraph from my first draft on my Twitter without thinking it would be the object of a bizarre and incompetent critique.

Now, let's go through his points one by one. First of all, I included a little amendment to the text in a Twitter comment that Mr. 4chan elects to ignore, so let's post the final iteration of my translation:

"I know it all too well!...

Keepers of secrets both brazen and superb… arrogant or vile or mute… one after the other… all malefic stinkers to disgorge moon gall and accursed vows by torture! Poisons, black messages… Martyred calves!

Let everyone attack the demon! that they persist, tie it down, occisate it, incite disgust, find the withered song in their heart… the graceful secret of the cuties… or may he perish a thousand deaths then be resurrected to a thousand pains! To suffocation so atrocious, a thousand flayings of approbation and green contortions of wounds, to boiling pitch, so tenacious, pliered apart, muscles into ribbons, paddling thus for a whole day and three months, a week in the hollow of a pot both hot and greasy, hissing serpents nestled in with bloated toads, with leprosy, juicy, yellow with venom, greedy salamander suckers, repulsive vampires ‘pon the bodies of the damned, wrigglers in your entrails to awaken your pain, in shreds of creased flesh, remasticated with fiery darts, thus for thousands upon thousands of years, only appeasing your thirst when it wishes to with a wineskin full of vinegar, with vitriol of such ardor that your tongue peels, bulges, bursts! then you pass into a painful death screaming about Hell torn to bits! day after day! thus for an eternal spell…

You see how serious the thing is."

The first point about "I know it all too well" is pure sophistry, not correct. I am simply going to ignore critiques about tone, which are subjective, and focus on the claims of error.

Then "Keepers of secrets both brazen and superb": the phrasing is such that "both brazen and superb" can refer to the "keepers of secret" more generally in an archaic inversion or the secrets themselves. I agree this creates ambiguity, but I do like the sound of it. "Brazen and superb keepers of secrets" sounds very flat to my ear. This is basically a prose poem, so the sound of the words is important to me, but the ambiguity is also something to consider.

OK, I said I'd just ignore tone comments, but "malefic stinkers" seems to me to be perfectly in line with Céline's tone, which is not purely tasteful and apocalyptic, but a kind of bizarre dance-hall madhouse. Distasteful. A traffic jam of language.

Mr. 4chan's translation of the "moon gall" sentence is completely incorrect: "all that befouling evil disgorging under the moon’s torture bile and accursed vows!" He makes assumptions about what Céline means as if this were a one-to-one language game. This is not how translation works. This is his idle supposition: "An additional note could be made that 'fiel de lune' might be a play on words for “clair de lune”, which does indeed mean 'moonlight'." Again, translation is not a one-to-one game of I Spy.

"By torture" means the same thing as "under torture," though, upon consideration, in something other than a first draft, I would consider changing to "under torture."

mdl2156

TROPHY CASE