[HN Gopher] What makes a translation great?
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What makes a translation great?
Author : ignored
Score : 22 points
Date : 2024-05-04 23:04 UTC (23 hours ago)
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| loughnane wrote:
| English-only speaker here.
|
| A good translation is one where the "good" in the original comes
| through. That might be a concept, a story, or even the rhythm of
| the words. Great books especially have _many_ good things that a
| translation needs to handle. Translation is hard because
| sometimes translating a "feel" might come at a loss of the
| clarity needed to express an idea.
|
| I like what Emerson said about it in "Books"
|
| > What is really best in any book is translatable, - any real
| insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, I observe that, in our
| Bible, and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems easy and
| inevitable to render the rhythm and music of the original into
| phrases of equal melody.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| The objective of a translator should be to retain the spirit of
| the original, and have the translated piece _stand on its own two
| feet as a work of literature._ This is why Ezra Pound and
| Christopher Logue were such good translators.
|
| Pound translated into English the Analects of Confucius, a bunch
| of Noh Plays, and many other works of Chinese and Japanese
| literature. But he was barely capable of reading Chinese or
| Japanese at all. He was provided with rough word-for-word
| translations by friends like Ernest Fenollosa, and he translated
| _those_ into literature.
|
| Logue didn't know any Ancient Greek, but his rendition of a part
| of the Iliad is probably the greatest achievement of late 20th
| century poetry. He simply re-worked the (many) _existing_ English
| translations into something more lyrical and contemporary. In
| effect, he reinterpreted the existing body of translations --
| and, in his own way, heightened their effect, and captured much
| of the spirit of the original.
|
| I find that most translations -- especially of poetry -- tend to
| be altogether too mechanical. Pound and Logue had it figured out.
| haunter wrote:
| >A good translation wants to be read
|
| So much this. For example I think a lot of people would actually
| enjoy Iliad and Odyssey more if their first experience weren't in
| dactylic hexameter.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Yes. I rather liked "The War Nerd Iliad" by John Dolan ("War
| Nerd" is a moniker that Dolan used in a column he used to
| write). It's basically a version of the Iliad that eschews the
| poetry and tells the story in a straightforward fashion. It's
| actually quite moving in a way.
| haunter wrote:
| Thanks never heard about that book but just ordered it
| kolme wrote:
| I'm quite proficient in German and English, but still translating
| is astonishing hard, even into my mother tongue Spanish. The
| translation always sounds weird. I'm always in awe at great
| translations.
|
| When I read translated texts (or watch dubbed films) I always
| catch false friends or awkward translations, and I "see" the
| original through the translation like it was a leaky abstraction.
| It's so tricky even the pros make a lot of mistakes.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I enjoyed Hofstadter's _Le ton beau de Marot_, which is precisely
| about this question; it studies many people's different
| translations of one particular obscure poem, and asks what
| properties of the original should be preserved.
| markc wrote:
| I came here to mention this book also. I learned a lot. He
| explores a mind numbing number of properties which are
| potentially in the mix. They depend in turn on the properties
| of the source material. (Authors play all kinds of games with
| meter and structure and arbitrary constraints - and preserving
| some can come at the cost of deprecating others.)
|
| One warning: among the genuinely deep insights, Hofstadter can
| occasionally come off as smug and self-congratulatory about his
| own poetic genius. I found this rather off-putting - and
| surprising since I found the tone of G.E.B. rather more like
| enthusiastic play.
| kazinator wrote:
| I have that book! Somewhere ...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| To answer what is a great translation, we first need to ask _to
| whom_ it should be great.
|
| The readers? The only thing that makes a translation great for
| them is whether the translated text reads well. Whether the
| translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the
| readers literally can't tell and don't care, that's why they are
| reading a translation!
|
| The publishers or whoever hired the translator(s)? The most
| important thing for them is speed of translation, how many words
| per minute. Accuracy and reading well are secondary to speed.
| Time is money.
|
| The translators themselves? Depending on whether these are
| amateurs translating out of passion or professionals translating
| for a living, what makes a translation great is going to be
| either accuracy or speed (time is money!) respectively.
|
| Personally, speaking as a Japanese-American who has done amateur
| translations (anime fansubs) at one point, being a translator is
| terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is
| thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't
| appreciate quality, and if you're translating for someone for
| hire there are usually more pressing concerns over quality.[1]
|
| [1]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/grandorder/comments/dnpzrh/everyone...
| getoj wrote:
| >Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is
| irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care
|
| As a professional translator, I cherish those readers. They
| have the good sense to trust me to do the technical part
| (understanding the original) and only criticize the artistic
| part (producing a beautiful derivative work).
|
| The worst readers are the ones who have some knowledge of the
| source language, and rush to nitpick the technical decisions
| without considering the artistic ones. They are the literary
| equivalent of those "fans" who will watch a stunning film
| adaptation and then go home to complain about the colour of
| Gandalf's shoes or the width of a sand worm's molars.
| Ultimately, readers of this type are all ego, more concerned
| about being right than about whether the work is good.
|
| The very best readers, of course, are knowledgeable in both
| languages and understand that "equivalence" goes far beyond
| what is written in the dictionary. But as you say, they don't
| need the translation!
| derbOac wrote:
| I'm always so torn about reading translations, especially of
| poetry. I do read them and value them but I always wonder what
| was lost in doing so.
|
| I have a bit of a sense of this having learned a couple of
| languages enough to be aware of what's lost in translation, and
| examples of good and bad translations.
| feikname wrote:
| To me a great translation should have Translator Notes (TN) and
| not be afraid of using neologisms. It seems TNs used to be more
| common but are increasingly rare.
| kazinator wrote:
| My two _Jabberwocky_ translations:
|
| https://www.kylheku.com/~kaz/gayabokin.html
|
| https://www.kylheku.com/~kaz/blabovluk.html
| wkjagt wrote:
| I feel that I am very sensitive to "translations sounding like
| translations". A feeling of "that isn't quite how a native person
| would say that, but I can't really identify what's wrong". My
| mother tongue is Dutch, and the strange thing is that with the
| strong influence of the English language, even a lot of content
| written in Dutch today sounds like it was translated from
| English. I find it really hard to explain it clearly though. Does
| anyone else feel the same and maybe knows what causes it?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Only a _truly great_ translator can fundamentally alter the
| meaning of the source and get away with it. (Well played, Ted
| Woolsey.)
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