Assignment 7 ( Iain Banks, The Bridge)

The Bridge is a novel written by Scottish author Iain Banks. It was published in 1986. and it represents one of the best Iain’s works. On the surface, The Bridge is a novel about three different protagonists: John Orr, The Barbarian and Alex. The reader is not told his full name but it is hinted to be Alexander Lennox, a troubled man who crashes his car while gazing at the Forth Bridge and goes into a coma. What reader will later realize is that all the characters are the same character, Alexander Lennox, who, while lying in a coma, revisits memories of his life up until the moment of the crash. Mixing realities, the concept of doppelganger, different allusions, etc. don’t make this book a fast paced one but Banks instead offers the reader the chance to literally enter the mind of the character – an opportunity that must not be missed.

Before starting my translation, I read an excerpt two times. It wasn’t hard to conclude what the text is about. We are given a dialogue between Mr John Orr and Mr Lynch. Upon my first reading I realized that the two persons, having a conversation, are from different social class: Mr John being a more sophisticated and educated one and Mr Lynch being a less educated one, perhaps from the lower, working class. The task was to adjust these two dialects, to translate the text in a way that reader realizes that these two persons are two different worlds. While reading, the difference between them needs to be obvious. This made the task a little bit challenging but also interesting.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Google.com and Wikipedia.com. Dictionary solved all my doubts when it comes to unfamiliar words but I mostly relied on my notes from the class and focused on finding corresponding equivalents.

Lynchy’s part of dialogue caused me a lot of troubles as I tried really hard to illustrate and present him in the way Iain Banks presented him in the original. Here are some problems that I had:

“ Scuse me, pal. New here, aren’t ye”    Izvin’te druže. Nov li si ovde? – I think that word Novajlija is also possible in the 2^nd sentence.

“Nothin’ just bein’ neighbourly. Wondered if there was anythin’ ye wanted”.  Niš’, samo pokušavam da budem ljubazan. Reko da vidim treba li ti što.

“his not-recently-washed face”  ne baš često prano lice or ne-skoro-oprano lice

“ Chucked ye out, just like that, eh?” I tek tako te izbaciše?

“Them doctors” Oni lekari?! or Ti lekari.

Before posting my translation I read it two times; it seemed quite right to me so I didn’t change anything. The text was definitely very interesting and not hard at all so I’ll grade it with 2.