Partly out of a desire to experiment more with language pairings, and partly as a result of all the stuff that's crossed my radar recently on the subject of translation, I thought it would be fun to read something fairly light and easy in several languages in parallel.

Translations of Agatha Christie are always the first thing I head for when I'm bringing a language up to reading level, and my lead translation of Murder on the Orient Express -- in Italian, a language in which I can follow this kind of story quite easily -- was the text I'd acquired when I first thought of doing this parallel reading back in the first English lockdown of 2020.

At that time, I also thought I was acquiring the Russian version, with a view to reading the Italian and Russian versions in tandem. It turned out that what I'd bought was the English text with endnotes and vocabulary lists for Russian readers... Derr...

Anyway, this time I acquired the genuine Russian text, and for good measure a version in Turkish (neither of which cost a lot).

I didn't actually need the English for the sake of comprehension, but when it came to comparing translations, obviously the English version was the mother text.

It's many years since I first read this book (originally published in 1934). I had also seen Kenneth Branagh's screen version. But, aside from the basic premise, I remembered hardly anything. So I was coming to it pretty much cold. It's an Hercule Poirot story, and the Orient Express of the title (actually the Simplon Orient Express) used to set out from the very Sirkeci Station that we visited the other day.


"The Bosphorus was rough and M. Poirot did not enjoy the crossing..."


"A whistle blew, there was a long, melancholy cry from the engine..."


"There was a sudden jerk. Both men swung round to the window, looking out at the long, lighted platform as it slid slowly past them. The Orient Express had started on its three-days' journey across Europe"

I found that once I'd read the Italian, I could decipher the Russian fairly well. I'm not sure how well I'd have been able to follow the story if I'd read the Russian version first, but it's encouraging to feel I'm not too many million miles off... Just have to keep plugging away. Exposure, exposure...

My Turkish is very elementary, and I don't have a lot of vocabulary, so really it was just a case of skimming through the text picking out what I recognized. I'd have got nowhere with understanding the story without the prop of the previous reading in Italian. But I could understand enough to be able to figure out some interesting stuff about the translation.

For the record, it was Lidia Zazo who provided the Italian translation; A.S. Petukhov who did the Russian one; and Gonul Severen who was responsible for the Turkish version. (I later read, courtesy of Esra Gul Ozcan that Severen is by far the most prolific translator of Christie's work in Turkey, and Altin Kitaplar, the publisher of my version, is now the official vehicle for Christie's oeuvre there. Christie is the author who has been most translated into Turkish, and the very first of her works to be translated was Murder on the Orient Express...)



The Turkish translation starts in a very business-like fashion with a list of characters, a list of clues, and a list of questions Poirot needs to answer (none of which makes much sense before you've even read any of the story).

But very early on, you become aware that the Turkish version irons out the French expressions that pepper the original text (mais oui, comme ca, en voiture, enfin...). They are simply rendered in Turkish, with no mucking about. The Italian version leaves them in French, with no explanation. The Russian translation also keeps the French, but explains these phrases by means of detailed endnotes (which are also used to explain other contemporary references that might not be clear).

The linguistic neutralization of the Turkish version also extends to other areas:

English:
"She's a pukka sahib," says one character of another. This is interpreted by Poirot, with heavy irony, as betokening a recognition that someone is from the same (elevated) class as the speaker.
Italian:
This version keeps the "pukka sahib" reference, with no further explanation, and directly translates Poirot's disparaging explanation.
Russian:
This version keeps the "pukka sahib" reference, and Poirot's explanation, and also adds an endnote (translating the phrase as a "true lady" -- which doesn't quite reflect the connotations of the original) .
Turkish:
"She's a really honest girl."

By Chapter 4, you're starting to realize that the Turkish translation leaves out a LOT. If a passage doesn't directly advance the plot, it is liable to be axed. Many of the little conversations that Christie uses to develop her character studies are omitted, for example, and the resulting book is much flatter, and much more specifically action-driven. Ozcan quotes one of Altin Kitaplar's translators as saying that the editorial aim is to create an "understandable" text, rather than one that is close to the style of the original (and this text lets us off reasonably lightly -- other Turkish translations omit entire chapters).

Sometimes, you realize, the omissions provide a useful way of getting round the racist and/or imperialist attitudes that many of the characters express. Christie is often accused of orientalism, and a publisher might understandably want to avoid any distraction from the central mystery by simply excising such viewpoints. However, this also means that the flavour of the 1930s, warts and all, is completely effaced. An example:

English:
"The colonel sat down. 'Boy,' he called in peremptory fashion. He gave an order for eggs and coffee."
Italian:
"The colonel sat down. 'Boy,' he called in a peremptory way. He ordered coffee and eggs."
Russian:
"The colonel sat down. 'Boy,' he called in a peremptory tone and ordered eggs and coffee." (There's an endnote explaining: "This is how servants are addressed in India.")
Turkish:
"The colonel sat down. Calling the waiter, he ordered eggs and coffee."


"Forward of the Istanbul-Calais coach there is only the dining-car"

When the orientalism specifically targets Turkey, then I guess it's understandable that it should be omitted (although this smacks of a slightly nannyish approach to the reader):

English:
"'By the way, Madame, did you travel out to Smyrna this way?' 'No. I sailed right to Stamboul, and a friend of my daughter's, Mr Johnson ... met me and showed me all round Stamboul, which I found a very disappointing city -- all tumbling down... What [my daughter's husband] will say when he hears about all this!'" (Adja Bastan, incidentally, argues that Mrs Hubbard's derogatory comments about Istanbul prove that she is involved in the murder, "because only a liar or a murderer could speak bad words about Istanbul, and a clever reader would understand this immediately".)
Italian:
"'By the way, did you arrive in Izmir by train, madame?' 'No. I came directly to Istanbul by ship, and a friend of my daughter's, Mr. Johnson ... came to pick me up and showed me around the city, which I found very disappointing: it is in ruins... I don't know what [my daughter's husband] will say when she finds out about all this!"
Russian:
"'By the way, madam, did you get to Smyrna the same way?' 'No, I sailed to Istanbul, and my daughter's friend, Mr Johnson ... met me and showed me Istanbul, which greatly disappointed me -- it's just all falling apart... Imagine what [my daughter's husband] will say when he finds out about all this!'"
Turkish:
"'Oh, by the way... did you go to Istanbul by train, madame?' 'No. I went by ship. A friend of my daughter met me there. He took me around Istanbul. Ah! Who knows what my daughter will say when she hears what happened to me?'"

Similarly, when a character refers to local people as "indolent", this is also omitted.

Interestingly, the Turkish version doesn't edit out M. Bouc's abuse of the Italians (any more than the Italian version does)...

According to Ozcan, the 1936 translation not only omits negative references to Turkey but replaces them with appreciative comments... And where the comment is positive ("La Sainte Sophie, it is very fine"), these versions whip the praise up a little further ("Ayasofya is one of the most beautiful architectural works of the world"). These editorial decisions Ozcan attributes to the era -- "a period when the government was trying to create a new national identity for the people".


"'La Sainte Sophie, it is very fine,' said Lieutenant Dubosc, who had never seen it"

The inconsistency of the omissions in Severen's translation, however, seems to indicate that they have more to do with a desire to keep the narrative moving briskly than with any sort of censorship. The reference to the Swedish character as a missionary, for example, is sometimes omitted, sometimes not. In one instance, it is inserted where it does not exist in the original. Asked if she possesses a red silk kimono, the Swedish woman answers:

English:
"No, indeed. I have a good comfortable dressing-gown of Jaeger material."
Russian:
"Of course not. I have a comfortable robe made of wool jersey."
Italian:
"No, really. I have a comfortable corduroy dressing gown."
Whereas the Turkish has:
"No, I am a missionary. I have a comfortable dressing-gown made of fine wool."

The Russian text really struggles with an important little twist in the plot, which is the initial on the handkerchief left in the dead man's compartment... The embroidered letter H is not the H of the Latin alphabet, as Poirot initially assumes, but rather the H which is the Cyrillic equivalent to the Latin N. But in the Russian version, the letter embroidered on the handkerchief is X, equivalent to Latin H... This leads to some fairly incomprehensible exchanges:

"But Madam Princess, the letter X is embroidered here... and your name is Natalia."

Huh...?

The lady explains that her handkerchiefs are always embroidered using Russian characters: "And the letter H of the Latin alphabet is written like the Russian letter N."

Errr, so what happened to X...?

Sometimes, things are just not interpreted quite correctly (a pointer to the constant pitfalls of translation):

English:
"Very neatly dressed in a little black suit with a French grey shirt."
Turkish:
"She was wearing an elegant black suit and a grey shirt."
Russian:
"A very neat little black jacket with a grey French skirt."
Italian:
"She wore a black outfit and a grey French blouse."

But it's fun to compare what bells say:

English: Ting... ting... ting...
Russian: Dzin'... dzin' ... dzin'...
Italian: Drin... drin... drin
Turkish: Tinn... tinn... tinn... [the i without the dot]

This was an interesting little exercise, which I think I'll repeat in the future (though possibly with just two texts, rather than three).

And as Murder on the Orient Express has now been translated into Manx, who knows -- maybe I'll be able to tackle that one day...