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Ed wrote: "But it entrances me. (OK, maybe not the 5 minute car ride, but overall....)"

I even like the car ride. So hypnotic...

The French/English translation is shortened and has name changes. Harey is called Rheya and the first visitor is called a fertility goddess!

Here's a well written article on a website I've never heard of:
It's about the relationship between Lem and PKD. Lem thought Dick was a great writer; Dick thought Lem was a fictional person created by a Communist spy ring. In case you forgot that PKD had reality problems.

This article has some interesting discussion of the newer direct-to-English translation in comparison to the first-French-then-English translation:

Thanks, Ed. That was interesting & a really long time coming, although some of those subtleties would still slip by me. I've read several translated books over the years & usually think that they're OK, but most of their introductions are filled with reasons why their particular translation is the best.

Back in high school, I did a comparison of several different translations of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Originally, I thought I was going to do all verses in all the versions in the school library, but there wound up being far too many. Who would think that even a prep school library would have almost a dozen different translations?!!! I settled on a few with a handful of his better known verses & still found far too many points to handle properly & I missed a LOT according to the teacher. Not knowing anything about the original language or culture made it a shot in the dark, but it was educating.

Just for fun, I tried a simple translation of one of the first sentences in "Solaris" in Google Translate:

English:
I attached the hose to the valve on my spacesuit and it inflated rapidly.
French:
J'ai attaché le tuyau à la valve de mon scaphandre et il s'est gonflé rapidement.
Polish:
Zawiązałem wąż do mojego zaworu nurkowego i szybko się spuchło.
French:
J'ai attaché le tuyau à ma valve de plongée et j'ai enflé rapidement.
English:
I tied the hose to my diving valve and swelled quickly.

Quite a difference in meaning which makes it easy for me to see how easily & wrong translations can be.

Thanks for that, Jim. It is fascinating to see how the meanings change.

Jim wrote: "Just for fun, I tried a simple translation of one of the first sentences in "Solaris" in Google Translate..."

A human translator would not make most of the same mistakes as this automated tool. Still, those tools are getting much, much better. If you did that exercise 10 years ago with the tools available then the results would have been gibberish.

On interesting word there for me is "spacesuit" coming out as "scaphandre". It should probably be "combinaison spatiale" or at least "scaphandre spatiale". The word "scaphandre" originally referred to what we call a "diving bell" and it gave its name to the syndrome called in English "locked-in syndrome" where a patient is conscious but unable to move. That usage is seen in the name of the movie "The diving bell and the butterfly" about such a patient.

That is a long digression, but I have a point. Few works of SF written by French people get translated to English. A recent exception was a book called "Le syndrome du scaphandrier". The story in the book plays around with both meanings of the word "scaphandrier". A literal translation of the title would be "The diving-bell syndrome" or "The diving suit syndrome", but those mean nothing to an English speaker. There doesn't seem to be any way to translate the title to give both meanings. The translator went with the relatively literal The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome, and I don't think I could have come up with anything better, even though the meaning of "locked-in syndrome" is totally lost.

Jim wrote: "Back in high school, I did a comparison of several different translations of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam..."

In Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, Douglas R. Hofstadter has a chapter comparing 4 different translations of Eugene Onegin. He gives many different passages translated all four ways and contrasts them. There is one very clear winner, James E. Falen . Only his version is clear and makes it easy to understand the plot while also preserving the rhyme scheme. The others either abandon the rhyme or twist the sentence structure so much that meaning is obscured.

The clear loser was, surprisingly, the one by Vladimir Nabokov. There is no doubt he understood the poem and speaks English and Russian perfectly. But he insisted so much on correct literal meaning that all the charm of the poem disappears.

Interesting, Ed. Translating for meaning seems tough enough. Adding a decent rhyme in ... wow. That's something to be treasured.

I agree completely on the automated translation tools. They are getting better, but do tend to be too literal. I've had users trying to use them for as long as they've been online, sometimes with disastrous results, although they've been a real help more often.

We use human translators sometimes even when the others speak English. It's a very tough language. One of our engineer's wives is fluent in Chinese, so they get to go out to dinner on the company's dime fairly often. Especially in informal topics, misunderstanding can occur easily.

Getting every further afield from "Null A", one of my favorite examples of "translation" is the poem "Black Bird" translated from normal English to "English without the letter E" by Gilbert Adair:

Black Bird

Twas upon a midnight tristful I sat poring, wan and wistful,
Through many a quaint and curious list full of my consorts slain--
I sat nodding, almost napping, till I caught a sound of tapping,
As of spirits softly rapping, rapping at my door in vain.
"Tis a visitor," I murmur'd, "tapping at my door in vain--
Tapping soft as falling rain."

Now that night-wing'd fowl placating my sad fancy into waiting
On its oddly fascinating air of arrogant disdain,
"Though thy tuft is shorn and awkward, thou," I said, "art not so backward
Coming forward, ghastly Black Bird wand'ring far from thy domain,
Not to say what thou art known as in thy own dusk-down domain."
Quoth that Black Bird, "Not Again."

This comes from Gilbert Adair's translation of A Void. (That is just an excerpt. He did the whole poem.) After the monumental task of translating a book from "French without E" to "English without E" he couldn't even get it published because someone else got to it first! It is apparently really hard to interest a publisher in doing a second translation of anything unless it was extremely popular and the original translation is considered faulty. And whoever becomes the first translator of any author pretty much gets to call dibs on translating any of their other works.

Ed wrote: "Getting every further afield from "Null A"..."
I meant "Solaris". Can't even keep track of what I'm talking about today!

I'm late to this party; I just read it. Well, most of it. I could not be bothered to finish it.

I did not like it, I did not think it held together well in any way.

I loved the idea of a sentient ocean! It is a great shame that was such a wasted theme in this Kelvin's repetitious story.

The science was poor. I could have enjoyed the information dump of Kelvin in the library, if the science was well done, but it was not well done.

In response to someone's comment; you are quite right, if he was worried about people not believing his experience he COULD have filmed the manifestations. We know he could have, because the book tells you there is a lot of film of the ocean in the library.

Also, after decades of research where no one has successfully communicated with the sentient ocean, the ocean kindly provided a manifestation to interreact with and talk to. What does Kelvin do? Try to kill it. At once. Without reason as it did not harm or threaten him.

Why does he get to a dysfunctional station and not even attempt to contact off world agencies? Where are the disaster/communication/emergency protocols? How is he so well trained in where to find Band-Aids but there are no emergency protocols?

How could anyone be so obtuse as to not notice that Snow does not remember conversations they had five minutes ago? Is anyone really that stupid?

No, sorry. the setting is a beautifully constructed thoroughly wasted science fiction world with immense, wholly wasted science fiction potential. Lem ignored all that amazing world building just so Kelvin could obsess about whether or not he wanted to kill the manifestation of his dead girlfriend.

I am quite annoyed by it.

Deborah wrote: "I'm late to this party; I just read it. Well, most of it. I could not be bothered to finish it.

I did not like it, I did not think it held together well in any way.

I loved the idea of a sentient..."

I sympathise. I also felt like there was a lot of missed potential in the novel. However I was perhaps a little more tolerant towards the plot holes and less tolerant towards the delivery.

My issues were mostly in the many long, meandering, meaningless descriptions of the various structures and sub-structures, especially given that nothing ultimately came of them and no further insights were gained in the story (that I could tell). Might be that I haven't fully embraced my existentialist side, but I prefer a little more meaning or resolution in a novel. It's a shame as I like to explore the idea that extra-terrestrial contact will be completely incomprehensible to humans as they are today. I am probably coming at it from the wrong angle and Lem's literal intention is to convey the futile attempt at academic analysis of an alien intelligence... but I still didn't really enjoy the delivery!

One thing that I differ with you on is the reaction of the people on the station. It's plausible to me that the human psyche can be tapped into in such a fundamental way that the immediate visceral reaction is to try and destroy those manifestations. I guess you could say the manifestations caused psychological rather than physical harm.

Deborah wrote: "...What does Kelvin do? Try to kill it. At once. Without reason as it did not harm or threaten him...."

My vague memory is that the thing was in the form of his ex-wife who had committed suicide on Earth. And it kept reappearing, and always had the same psychological issues that would cause it to kill itself again. He wanted to get rid of it fast so he wouldn't get attached to it and go through that pain again.

Of course, I may be mis-remembering.

Ed wrote: "Deborah wrote: "...What does Kelvin do? Try to kill it. At once. Without reason as it did not harm or threaten him...."

My vague memory is that the thing was in the form of his ex-wife who had com..."

You are correct that it was his ex-gf who suicided, but the way Lem handled it felt like he was trying to set up a horror story: You know when you watch a movie with 'danger music' trying to convince you everything is scary, so that when character's behaviour is illogical, that makes sense to you because they are scared (probably you are too).

But then, if you watch the scene again, with the sound muted, you realise that none of those events are actually, inherently scary, so the behaviour of the characters ceases to make sense.

That is how the start of Solaris seemed to me. If you agreed they were terrified, idiotic behaviour is possible, but Lem never gave us ANY reason for them to be terrified.

Sabri wrote: "Deborah wrote: "I'm late to this party; I just read it. Well, most of it. I could not be bothered to finish it.

I did not like it, I did not think it held together well in any way.

I loved the id..."

You said it! Totally wasted potential!!

I loved the concept of the sentient ocean and there was so much wasted potential for that first contact. It felt like any scene I read with Kelvin and whatshername in it, I wanted to beg him to stop trying to kill her and use this unparalleled chance to communicate.

So frustrating. I am not saying that first attempts to communicate -especially with something that big- may not have ended in mayhem, but mayhem without any effort to communicate first annoyed me.

I agree that the drawn out description of the structures of the ocean 'forms' was redundant, at fist I found it interesting, but it was too long and had no relevance to the rest of the book that I could see.

With regards to the people on the station and their response... I see what you are saying; I actually think that was probably what Lem was aiming to achieve. The methodology did not work for me, personally because if you are going to posit that something is terrifying the crew into psychological discord, beyond their ability to function, then I feel like you need to give us more of a reason for it than we got. It is like the horror movie I described to Ed, it is as though the actual source of fear was never provided.

btw - did you write a review for this one? I would like to read it.

Deborah wrote: "btw - did you write a review for this one? I would like to read it. "

I'm afraid not. I've been haphazardly using GoodReads as a way to engage in conversations, find recommendations, and keep a track of my own ratings/thoughts, in that order of priority. However I will keep it in mind if I get a free hour!

Sabri wrote: "Deborah wrote: "btw - did you write a review for this one? I would like to read it. "

I'm afraid not. I've been haphazardly using GoodReads as a way to engage in conversations, find recommendation..."
Ah well. I hear you - did not start reviewing until after I had been on GR for a few years. I have really enjoyed writing them, they help consolidate my thoughts about a book and help prevent me re-reading some because I don't remember I already have.

Deborah wrote: "...I have really enjoyed writing them, they help consolidate my thoughts about a book and help prevent me re-reading some because I don't remember I already have."

Agreed. I've read so many books that are quite forgettable, especially as I age due to their similarities, that I'd start to reread fairly often if I couldn't look them up.