Schloss aus Glas is a Lesson in Translation

 I would like to thank both Professor Demleiter, who was generous enough to give me this copy of Schloss aus Glas, and the North Shore Public Library, who have temporarily supplied me with its original English version. Your generosity helps expose people like me to new things, and we don’t acknowledge that nearly enough!

I’m grateful for Prof. Demleitner especially, since Schloss aus Glas was a very appropriate gift: although she (probably) didn’t know it, I had read and loved The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls’ memoir about growing up with eccentric, neglectful parents, in its original English. The Glass Castle is neat. It’s sad, but it’s full of wonder too. Even when it’s clear Walls is being led astray, there’s no emotional barrier between her and the reader.

Schloss aus Glas was the first adult book I read in German, so I checked the original English version out of the library again. Since I want to be a translator, I also thought it would be interesting to observe the differences between the book in both languages.

Usually when I read translated fiction, I like to comment on the beauty (or awkwardness) of the prose. But since Schloss aus Glas, translated by Ulrike Wasel and Klaus Timmerman, isn’t in my native language, I have no idea whether they’ve done a good job or not.

They’ve certainly made it longer. I heard from Books by Leynes, a German Booktuber I follow, that translating a work from English into German means multiplying its original page count by 5/4. Although The Glass Castle and Schloss aus Glas have the same font size, the original English version has 290 pages and its translation has 382, so that maxim holds up. But that’s just the grammar. What about the words themselves?

Wasel and Timmerman prefer to translate for emotional resonance than literal meaning, which suits Schloss aus Glas’ story just fine. It also makes the American slang much less awkward—in the Glass Castle, Jeannette’s mother refers to a nearby brothel as a “cathouse” and the young Jeannette is confused by the absence of cats. Frau Walls, meanwhile, calls it a “Freudenhaus,” and Jeanette remarks instead that it doesn’t look very fun. The insults hurled by the adults around her are also translated liberally, substituting in local (albeit accurate) vocabulary.

Proper nouns don’t get the same treatment. Part of The Glass Castle’s charm is its archipelago of mid-century American brand and place names, which usually retain their English titles. Sometimes Wasel and Timmerman include short explanations of specific terms like “Tumbleweed,” which weren’t necessary in the English version. Near the end of the story, they even insert a sentence about Jeanette learning Yiddish words from her New York editor. It’s plausible that Wasel and Timmerman could have found another source and corroborated it—that detail makes sense for Jeannette’s fish-out-of-water story—but there’s no basis for it in The Glass Castle.

More puzzling is what Wasel and Timmerman leave out. The story of one of Walls’ friends ends on an ominous note in The Glass Castle, but Wasel and Timmerman omit its devastating final line. I don’t know why they did so; the rest of the narrative isn’t afraid of dark topics at all. And since I didn’t read both books simultaneously, I probably ignored lots of little “translators’ omissions.” Maybe this is a common practice. I’m not sure I like it. But I didn’t miss the things I didn’t notice.

Aside from being a fine book in both languages, Schloss aus Glas was a good education. Reading a book alongside its translation taught me a about how translators think, and what I should keep in mind as I continue to develop my craft.