[HN Gopher] Against Translation
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Against Translation
Author : behoove
Score : 21 points
Date : 2021-12-19 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (libertiesjournal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (libertiesjournal.com)
| jonas21 wrote:
| I don't generally have a problem with long-form, but if your
| article has a title that implies there's an argument in there, I
| feel like you owe it to the reader to at least give some idea of
| what that argument is within the first 5 paragraphs.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| After reading the whole thing, I got the distinct impression
| that the author probably strongly dislikes readers who want (or
| are used to!) an argument presented in the first 5 paragraphs.
| hlbjhblbljib wrote:
| Fuck him then
| kingcharles wrote:
| Of course it would be great to read books in their native
| language, but is it better to get a reasonable translation of a
| book, or no translation at all? That is the question.
|
| If you take some authors with multiple translations over many
| decades, e.g. Proust or Hugo, you can see that the early
| translations are actually very rough, and only recently are we
| seeing very high quality.
|
| The main problem is that language translation is forever
| imperfect. If you look at Proust's French, there is no direct
| translation into English for the way it is written because no
| English person writes in that manner, so the translator has to
| make a lot of hard decisions to make the book enjoyable.
|
| My French isn't strong enough to read native Proust (god, I wish
| it was), but then you have things like Hugo which is 1800s French
| and I'm sure even modern French kids have some trouble reading
| it.
|
| If you do read a translated book, PLEASE find the best
| translation before you purchase. I'll give you an example...
|
| This Les Mis book has the same illustration on the front (public
| domain) as the musical poster, so it looks official:
| https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Signet-Classics-Victor-Hug...
|
| But it is a miserable 100 year old translation spruced up a bit.
| You will probably hate the book and hate your life if you try to
| read it. It boasts that it is unabridged because that seems like
| a thing you would want, but...
|
| This new translation by Penguin is like night and day:
| https://www.amazon.com/Miserables-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp...
|
| It is somewhat "abridged" because the translator took the bold
| step of tearing out 50 pages of the book - that are basically
| just the author going on a rant and has nothing to do with the
| story - and translated them and stuffed them in the appendix.
| This was a smart move, and went above their job title to produce
| a much more readable work.
|
| tl;dr: read more great foreign books; always check you are
| getting the best translation before you start
| Baeocystin wrote:
| My view on translations is that if literary luminaries such as
| Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Vladimir Nabokov both think that the
| English versions of their work fully stand up to the test
| (which they are both on record as stating), then that is good
| enough for me.
|
| I am not monolingual. I know what it feels like to read in
| different languages, and here's the thing: The words? The
| grammar? Easy. You can learn enough to stumble through a
| newspaper in a matter of months.
|
| The culture _behind_ the language? _That_ is what takes decades
| to acquire, and if you don 't have it, I 100% guarantee you
| will get a _more accurate_ reading of the author 's intent in a
| well-translated work than you ever would lurching your way
| though the native text.
| shanhaiguan wrote:
| Tangentially. As someone who has only read the old Signet
| version of Les Mis, I find it interesting that you think it
| isn't as good. When I read it, I was very impressed with Hugo's
| prose (or at least, filtered through the translated lens). It
| was not like reading anything I had ever previously read.
| Sounds like I need to check out the new one then too :)
| aaroninsf wrote:
| I'll take this opportunity to translate the essay.
|
| "Translation is lossy therefore bad. (Also, I am a cultured
| person with an admirably rich life to mine anecdotes and allusion
| from. No truly, it's puro puro, the good stuff, primo first
| pressing life experience in the old hand-crafted vein, you won't
| live this life these days let me tell you. No, truly; let me tell
| you.)"
| slibhb wrote:
| > There was no doubt that there was a lot in our collective past
| that was shameful -- though how this made us different from every
| other nation was never clear to me. What was clear was that
| feeling ourselves to be the worst was -- like feeling ourselves
| to be the best -- characteristic of our particular form of
| national narcissism. And I thought that, if we were going to turn
| our backs on our patrimony, we ought to do it consciously. We
| ought, at the very least, to know what that culture was, what it
| had been
|
| Wise words.
| charcircuit wrote:
| This was too long for me to understand. The author should just
| get to the point they want to make.
| kingcharles wrote:
| You shouldn't get downvoted for your opinion.
| yosito wrote:
| I love reading books in their native language, especially when
| there is no translation available. It's like having a key to an
| exclusive world that others can't access. It is, however, quite a
| bit of work to learn a new language simply to be able to read
| works in that language and I'm not sure if it provides much value
| aside from a smug sense of being educated and multilingual.
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(page generated 2021-12-19 23:01 UTC)