« Scions | Main | Name Dropping »
August 14, 2006
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
I blame Bia?oszewski. For the short sentences. In fact, fragmentary. Sentences, that is. Very annoying. He wrote a book once. Famous.
Pami?tnik z powstania warszawskiego.
It was called.
Miron Bia?oszewski wrote short, abrupt sentences in a sometimes successful attempt to capture and reflect the urgency and chaos of Warsaw during the uprising. Polish lends itself to this style, having many impersonal, one word constructions like "ciemno" (it is dark), or "cicho" (it is quiet). The novel is very highly thought of in Poland, as is witnessed by the numerous imitations of his style (see Marcinkiewicz's blog), but it's a long way from the high drama of the Warsaw uprising to the rather less exciting world Warsaw's rising housing costs and short sentences just don't cut it. Here is Magdalena Szwarc in today's colour supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza writing about the apparently newly-discovered phenomenon of borrowing money to buy one's home:
Heatwave. Marta looks into the cupboard. She could do with buying some tee-shirts. Not much of an expense, you'd think, but six or eight comes to a lot. She'll wait till next month.For more of the delightful and pleasant style of giving each sentence a paragraph all of its own, see the BBC news website.
It pains her a bit.
...
The foreman shows them up to the fifth floor. Dust. The damp smell of concrete. It's quiet because it's Saturday. No one is working.
Ania has been nauseous all morning. She is pregnant.
They walk through the kitchen of their future neighbours at number 15 and through number 20's living room. It's dark. There are no windows.
...
From the third floor up the flats are cheaper
There will be a lift.
They go to see.
Posted by hgrodsk at August 14, 2006 11:47 AM
Comments
Ever read any Hemmingway?
'The bull stood in the field. It was a good bull. The sun was how. It was a good sun...'
Posted by: beatroot at August 15, 2006 01:50 PM
Hemingway was very popular in Poland alright.
Posted by: Henry Grodsk at August 15, 2006 05:39 PM
In translating academic Polish into English, I'm constantly breaking up monster length epics disguised as single sentences into smaller more manageable chunks. Actually they often read pretty well in Polish but turn into a confused mess in English which doesn't lend itself to extremely long sentences with multiple dependent and/or relative clauses.
I also have translation students translate some articles (from GW mainly) into English and often enough go ahead and do it myself as well. In Polish journalistic style I'm constantly joining short choppy sentences together (though my students assure me they don't perceive them as short and choppy) into longer ones.
Posted by: michael farris at August 15, 2006 09:25 PM