THE FILIPINO TRANSLATION OF SUZANNE COLLINS’ “CATCHING FIRE”: YET ANOTHER REASON WHY IT’S MORE FUN TO READ FILIPINO

RATING GUIDE:

 

5 – A keeper!   

4 – Very good

3 –  Passable

2 –  I’d rather read a telephone book

1 – An absolute bomb.  Read at your own risk!

I’ve read a few Filipino translations of popular foreign novels lately, and I have to say that the experience has proven to be quite enjoyable.  In fact, it’s actually quite addicting, which is probably why I was very happy to get hold of Suzanne Collins’ “Catching Fire,” another one of Precious Pages Corporation’s Filipino translations of a foreign-made book.

I thought that Janis de los Reyes, who translated Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,” would be the one to translate the second book, so I was surprised to discover that this wasn’t the case.  This time, “Catching Fire” was translated by someone named Katrina Pineda.

As with the other translations that Precious Pages Corporation produced, the Filipino translation of “Catching Fire” is also very close to the original.   Accuracy in terms of voice and details appear to be a given, so there’s no problem in those areas.  The publishing house seems to take extra care in producing translations that are as close as possible to the original, so I didn’t see any problems in these areas. 

But this book was definitely a more difficult reading project for me, simply because it matched the complexity of Suzanne Collins’ book.  It took me two or three long reading sessions to finish the Filipino translation of “The Hunger Games.”  This time, it took me almost a week of nightly reading to finish “Catching Fire.”  There were a few times when I also had to stop because I had to ask, “What does that word mean?”  The book contained words that I didn’t even know existed (e.g., the word “galang-galangan”).  And there were a few phrases that sounded a little awkward, but I think it really couldn’t be helped.  It had to be written that way in order to stay as accurate to the original.

Once I was finished reading “Catching Fire,” I thought, WOW.  If I were a mountain climber, this experience would be like climbing Mount Everest.  A long, uphill climb, but so, so worth it.  I had such a feeling of accomplishment once I was done reading it. 

And I still can’t explain this contradiction, but reading something in Filipino is both difficult and easy.  Sometimes you have to stop at the words you don’t encounter everyday, but once you go past that mini-interruption, everything is surprisingly easy and pleasurable.  Definitely a better reading experience. 

I read this translation just after a few months of reading the original, and yet, I’m surprised that the translation made the story of “Catching Fire” more alive and vivid in my imagination.  At times, I would stop and go, WOW.  Did that happen?  Did she say that?  Did he do that?  Was that really there?  How could I have missed that?  Reading Filipino material is definitely something I can appreciate.

Perhaps the people over at Precious Pages Corporation could consider coming up with a glossary of the not so common Filipino words that are featured in the book to help those readers whose Filipino isn’t exactly of balagtasan quality.  I actually know of one visitor who stumbled across this blog and asked me about one of the Filipino translations I blogged about.  According to him, he wanted to read the translation to study Filipino.  I think a glossary would be very helpful to people like him who want to be more familiar with Filipino.

RATING:  5