A retired Vancouver Island University English professor has ensured nothing is lost in translation with her take on a German literary work depicting the horrors of the First World War.
All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque drawing on his war-time experience, was originally published in a 1928 and was among the books burned in Nazi Germany. It details the stress and trauma experienced by the protagonist, a German soldier, in the trenches and the toll. It centres on eight young men who are basically friends, she said, and "bond as comrades under fire," with none expressing hatred for Allied soldiers.
Katharina Rout, who hails from Germany, says her work is the first translation of the novel into North American English.
Two scenes in the original particularly resonated with her. The first is when the protagonist shares food and cigarettes with Russian prisoners of war, seeing their humanity and suffering, and the second during a battle when the protagonist and a French solider take cover in a crater amidst the chaos.
The two are terrified of each other, Rout explains. The main character stabs the French soldier and the two spend many hours in the crater as the battle rages on.
"They can't get out, and he feels utterly devastated by his own guilt, and he tries to look after the [man's wounds]," said Rout. "He gives him some water to drink, and he has to watch him die, and he has to deal with that and it's an amazingly intense scene. It's not about an enemy. It's not about nationalism, patriotism, hatred. There's nothing political about it. It's purely on the human level."
In an e-mail, Don LePan, CEO and founder of Broadview Press, publisher of Rout's adaptation, said there are few works that vividly capture both the physical and psychological experience of war.
"I don’t think it’s possible to read and absorb a book like All Quiet on the Western Front and still be capable of enthusiasm about the prospect of war," said LePan. "One may reluctantly still feel some wars, such as the war in Ukraine, to be necessary to fight, in the face of aggression. But enthusiasm? No … In order to retain its full capacity to affect us, though [it] has to be available in a translation that speaks to people in their own language, and in the language of their own time."
Despite the passage of close to 100 years since original publication, Rout said All Quiet on the Western Front is more relevant than ever, particularly with the aforementioned war between Ukraine and Russia.
"The Ukrainians find that Remarque is really capturing what they experience, including the trench warfare, and they have quoted, reprinted and blogged about Remarque. For example, the Remarque centre in Germany … is called the Peace Center, and they have put Russians and Ukrainians who visit there into discussion groups together, as an effort to say, 'Hey, let's talk peace here. What can we learn from Remarque together?’” said Rout.
There are intricacies when translating, according to the professor, as there are never a "one-to-one match of words or sentences." She hopes the clarity of the narrator's voice reaches people in a fresh way in her interpretation.
"If the old translations has a soldier say, 'By Jove!' … [or] one of the soldiers talks about a girlfriend and he says 'She's a fine lass,' I mean, that doesn't resonate. I'm trying to bring that fresh tone that I think is still in the original novel into this language so people can read the story as if Remarque had written it for us today," said Rout.
A book launch will held at the Black Rabbit Kitchen and Attic, 321 Selby St. in Nanaimo, on Thursday, Nov. 7, from 7-8:30 p.m.
