[HN Gopher] What makes a translation great?
___________________________________________________________________
What makes a translation great?
Author : ignored
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-05-04 23:04 UTC (2 days 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Le Guin's version of the tao te ching fits into this category
| too.
| nataliste wrote:
| I stumbled upon War Music after discarding (almost) every other
| translation of the Iliad because the translators cleary didn't
| _get_ it. Sure, they could talk about Homeric epithets for days
| and knowingly reference the "wine dark sea," but the actual
| ethic and humanity of the Iliad eluded them. And when you _do_
| get those aspects (as Logue did), the actual choice of idiom by
| the translator becomes irrelevant, whereas if you don 't get
| them, no matter how "technically accurate" the idiom is, it's
| just farcical. To my mind, these ersatz translations become the
| Homeric equivalent of English as She Is Spoke.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I stumbled upon War Music after discarding (almost) every
| other translation of the Iliad because the translators cleary
| didn't get it
|
| Homer's world is very alien to ours. I realized at one point,
| reading the Odyssey, that it is myself who _didn 't get it_.
| There was a chasm between me and Homer, and if I wanted read
| and understand Homer in a meaningful way, I was going to have
| to cross it.
|
| Unless I have personal expertise, how can I evaluate who
| 'gets it', Logue or others?
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| As someone who can read Ancient Greek, Homer is unlike
| anything we have in English. No translation can "get it."
| It's oral poetry meant to be performed for hours at a time
| with a bunch of repetitive stock phrases. I don't feel like I
| "get it" reading it in Greek. It's absolutely beautiful but
| even when I read it in Greek, I feel like there's this huge
| gulf between me and the context it which it was created. I
| think you should just choose whatever translation you find
| beautiful but there's also value if someone wants to read
| something that's worded more closely to the Greek.
| Daub wrote:
| Once or twice I have 'translated translations' of Chinese movie
| subtitles. The basic translation done by a Chinese native who
| speaks Engkish, with my contribution being to bash the English
| into shape. I do this in discusiion with the director. I wish
| more subtitles were done in this way. Rubbish subtitles are
| endemic in the industry.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I see that in other places too. I fear it reduces the films
| to the level of camp. Do the directors not think it matters?
| Do they not have easy access to fluent speakers of English?
| Daub wrote:
| I have seen this more in art house movies and frankly cant
| understand why it is not a larger issue. I once offered
| this service to a director I liked, only for him to refuse
| it. His final subtitles were atrocious.
| philipov wrote:
| It takes more than a fluent speaker to write good
| literature. And that's the rub - you need someone who is
| themselves capable of writing good literature, regardless
| of whether it's original or a translation of an existing
| work.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The errors I'm talking about could be fixed by any fluent
| speaker.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I encountered this with _Hero_ , when the single giant
| calligraphy character that is critical to the film had a
| different subtitle in the cinema and on the DVD. One of these
| days I'd love to read a deep dive into how that aspect of the
| film is understood by native speakers. Which I suspect might
| be longer than the film itself, dealing as it does with the
| politics of Chinese unity.
| candiodari wrote:
| I would say it greatly depends:
|
| 1) contract/legal/diplomatic translation: capture the meaning
| as _exact_ as possible, even if that means the translation is
| boring and double, or even ten times the length of the
| original.
|
| 2) literary translation: translate to keep things interesting
| and engaging. EVEN where that means changing the meaning,
| order, ... of things. Making some changes to accomplish that
| can be acceptable, for example changing the behavior of a
| polite character or a policeman or a person of authority to
| match expected behavior for those kinds of people in the target
| country. Matching the structure of the original text is just
| not a concern at all.
|
| The translation itself should be a literary work. Obviously not
| separate from the original, but not 100% the same either. 95%
| the same, with the remaining 5% providing maximum "flavor".
|
| 3) educational translation: depending on the level of the
| reader, evolve from literal translation, even putting the words
| in the wrong order for the target language just to match the
| original text as closely as possible, or leaving some words
| untranslated. Slowly evolve towards more "interesting"
| translation. In any case keep the structure, sequence and word
| use of the original text 100%.
|
| 4) conversational translation: translate as quickly as
| possible, for example not waiting for complete sentences to
| start translating. Try to get feedback going between both
| speaker and listener, as the purpose is having them
| communicate, not having exact translation, or interesting
| translation. Just translate 5 words at a time, even when they
| don't form complete sentences.
| wolverine876 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.
|
| If I want to read inspired Ezra Pound or Christopher Logue,
| that's the way. If I want to read Confucius, I get a lot of
| Ezra Pound mixed in, and in a way that is impossible for me to
| distinguish one from the other. The same goes for wanting to
| read Homer and getting a lot of Logue.
|
| (For Confucius, Arthur Waley was both leading translator and
| poet, and Waley's translations are highly recommended for their
| knowledge of the original and their English poetry.)
| lmm wrote:
| Nah. If you want to write an original work of literature, write
| an original work of literature. If you're writing a
| translation, it should reflect the original, good and bad, and
| you absolutely need to understand the original language to do
| that.
| VelesDude wrote:
| This is why there are SO many translations of the Tao Te Ching.
| Some are very mechanical, others miss the point entirely. And
| then there are those one where it is almost like Poetry, they
| went beyond just the immediately presented content.
|
| To that I would recommend the translation of it by Red Pine
| (Bill Porter), not only is is a wonderful translation but it
| does so much to add additional context via others commentary on
| the chapters through out the ages.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I had wondered why Pound went fascist when he seemed so open at
| the start of his career, doing all these translations. Although
| I couldn't find "the gentleman who wrote a 'translation' by
| avoiding the work of translating" in Dorothy Thompson's party
| game in Harper's, it does seem to explain it nicely.
| dri_ft wrote:
| Woefully glib.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| for more detail: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page
| =0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| of which the most relevant is:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208047
|
| What's your explanation of why Pound went Fascist?
|
| Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3C3nfF3SMA
| dri_ft wrote:
| >for more detail: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&p
| age=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| Oh, I see. We actually discussed Pound about four years
| ago - just a little back and forth about the _ABC of
| Reading_ : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196681
|
| >What's your explanation of why Pound went Fascist?
|
| I'm not sure I particularly have one; I haven't read any
| of his longer political or cultural (i.e. non-literary)
| works. I just think it's silly to correlate an approach
| to translation that you dislike with fascism. Especially
| as I'm not sure it even makes sense on its own terms: I
| can only read your comment as 'lazy translator? Figures
| that he would be a fascist', but if I imagine the type of
| translation a fascist would approve of, the approach I
| picture is fastidious, fussy, concerned with fidelity to
| the point of stickler-ishness. (Isn't that from where we
| get 'grammar nazi'?)
|
| And oh, well, since you ask I'll take a shy at it: my
| vague sense is that he became fascist because saw a
| society in decline due to it becoming more and more a
| sham society: opulence without virtue, power without
| vigour, money no longer tied to actually existing goods.
| (Of course, all of this shades easily into antisemitism.)
| He saw fascism as the answer; It's easier to see in
| retrospect that it wasn't.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Maybe I put my comment poorly because what I wrote 4
| years ago is still in my head. I had had a working
| hypothesis that xenophilia is antifascistic. (how about
| comedy? Fascism produced "Lili Marleen", but did it
| produce any comedians?)
|
| My big Q was: if Pound was such a xenophile (as I had
| thought) when young, why did he turn to Fascism when
| older?
|
| TIL that he wasn't ever xenophilic; he only dealt with
| the other once it had been transmuted into the familiar
| and he could work it on his own terms. (thus restoring my
| working hypothesis)
|
| Does that make more sense?
|
| Thanks for your answer!
|
| As to his potential conclusion that fascism ("tomorrow
| belongs to _me_ ") was the answer to "western decline",
| see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24696859
|
| Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybY0QeZdro
| soundnote wrote:
| I don't know if that works out: A lot of people on the
| right I know are quite xenophilic in the sense of having
| a deep interest in other cultures etc, though not
| indiscriminately so.
|
| The difference between them and much of the left is that
| they've come to reject oikophobia as wrong and are
| consciously oikophilic when it comes to their own culture
| and ethnicity, while the leftist configuration is
| oikophobic/xenophilic.
|
| (Not to say there aren't oikophilic/xenophobic people,
| but I feel like that's more often an unthinking stance)
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| There is no perfect translation. Different translations have
| different aims and that's ok. I love Anne Carson's translations
| of Sappho but I always give the caveat that she takes a lot of
| liberties with Sappho when I recommend it to a friend. Having a
| more literal, dry, translation is fine too.
| 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
| greenie_beans wrote:
| weird, today i researched different translations for both of
| these. which ones are your favorite?
| cafard wrote:
| Who translated the Iliad and Odyssey into (English) hexameters?
| haunter wrote:
| Rodney Merrill is the only who translated both in english
| hexameters. If just one there are a lot of translations https
| ://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/homer/homertranslations....
| Detrytus wrote:
| Is there even such a thing as "English hexameters"? From what
| I remember from high school hexameter is based on the feature
| of the Greek language having both "short" and "long" vowels,
| which is then used to create a particular rhythm. My mother's
| tongue does not have such feature which makes it impossible
| to make real hexameters in it. Translations do not even try
| to imitate it.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| I'm quite enjoying Lattimore's translation of The Iliad. I've
| tried a couple of other translations which were not at all
| enjoyable to read.
| 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.
| sureIy wrote:
| This is why I no longer watch dubbed movies, especially because
| those translations often try to mimick the mouth movements
| rather than the actual meaning.
|
| In Italy a "pepperoni" pizza is translated as "pizza ai
| peperoni", which is "bell pepper pizza"
| 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!
| pjc50 wrote:
| > 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
|
| I'm surprised that you feel that way, because I've always
| associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not
| always correctly, but always strongly) about the translations.
| Hence the fansubs in the first place. It's only really a thing
| for anime in the first place; there aren't many people fan-
| translating Spanish telenovellas or Kdramas into English, for
| example.
|
| > Accuracy and reading well are secondary to speed. Time is
| money.
|
| Looks like AI will accelerate this tendency. We'll get more,
| cheaper, but worse, translations. Which I see as a qualified
| good, since it means more amateur and "long tail" from other
| languages can make it to the English Internet.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I've always associated the anime community with caring very
| strongly (not always correctly, but always strongly) about
| the translations.
|
| As I came to find, most watchers simply couldn't care. How
| could they? They don't know Japanese! They certainly
| appreciated anime, but they couldn't appreciate translating
| and I won't blame them for not appreciating what they don't
| know.
|
| Of those who did care, though, most of them judged
| translations for all the wrong reasons and usually without
| realizing. Kind of a similar vein to how most ham radio guys
| know enough electricity to be dangerous but not enough to be
| useful.
|
| All in all I found the work was ultimately a thankless one
| and I burned out real bad after serving as a translator for a
| couple animes.
|
| But the fansub group I was with were a great bunch, and the
| flame wars I had with other translators in other fansub
| groups were awesome. Flame wars between passionate people who
| know what they're talking about are a sight to behold.
| soundnote wrote:
| The translations in anime at least are unlikely to actually
| be worse, since a lot of the English anime translation
| industry are obsessed with inserting woke politics and
| cringey zoomer jokes into their translations and more or less
| hate the people who buy their products. There's a reason a
| lot of people are laughing at the activist translators losing
| their jobs to AI.
|
| In areas where the translators are actual, responsible
| professionals, the quality will suffer.
| SunlitCat wrote:
| Although your comment is unnecessary strongly worded, you
| raise some very serious points.
|
| Especially Japanese - English entertainment media
| translations, it is very often pretty apparent that there
| is some kind of agenda behind translation of such works
| (even with translators admitting it them self doing so in
| comments / messages on different social media platforms).
|
| Something I just wonder is, why does especially this niche
| part of this profession (translating Japanese entertainment
| media) attract people doing so and even let them admit to
| make it more culturally appropriate for western markets?
|
| It's really an interesting phenomena.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Japanese entertainment is among the more popular
| entertainment venues in recent years, and that means it's
| also a useful tool for political espionage. People
| interested in pushing political agendas would be fools to
| not exploit this as they would any other.
|
| Hell, the distribution of Japanese entertainment across
| the world is in large part a Japanese government
| agenda[1] for diplomatic ends.
|
| It's all politics.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan
| SunlitCat wrote:
| Hah! That "Cool Japan" thing! I remember some (lesser
| known) people to advertise for it. Dunno, it (cool japan)
| came to a halt in 2020 and never took off again
| afterwards.
| soundnote wrote:
| I don't think Japanese translation is all that well paid,
| and if people don't get money from their work, they'll go
| for the job for other forms of payment (eg. status), or
| extract payment in other ways (half-assing things, being
| a petty tyrant like reddit mods, etc.)
| adelie wrote:
| from my experience doing animanga-adjacent translations -
| readers also prioritize speed first, quality second. there
| are a lot of people who will happily read machine-translated
| work (and often awkward, typo-ridden MTL at that) rather than
| wait a day or two for better translations. same goes for
| general scanlation quality, like typesetting and redraws.
|
| this is also why the fansubbing scene is effectively dead -
| companies like crunchyroll get episode scripts early and can
| thus release subs simultaneously with the official release.
| most fansub groups now just fix/edit the crunchyroll script,
| if they even pick up series at all. there's no point in
| putting in the effort if no one's going to look at it, after
| all.
|
| that's the main issue i have with 'more but worse'
| translations, honestly. you'll get more material, but the
| good translators won't just move to content that wasn't
| translated before - they'll just disappear entirely.
| lmm wrote:
| > 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!
|
| On the contrary, readers generally read a translation because
| they want to read a specific work, and/or experience the
| culture it's part of, but can't or won't spend what it would
| take to become fluent in the language themselves. If they just
| wanted to read something that reads well they wouldn't be
| reading a translation. So accuracy is something they care
| deeply about, even - especially - if they're poorly qualified
| to assess it.
|
| > 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
|
| Well, yes. It's like sound design, or colour grading, or stage
| magic; when you do it right, the audience doesn't notice that
| you've done anything at all. It certainly takes a certain
| mentality to thrive in.
| 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.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Note: Am/was an amateur translator.
|
| I dislike translation notes. Translations are already a form of
| notes, so appending notes to notes is just bad form.
|
| Some translations can be so awkward or simply impossible that
| leaving a translation note becomes inevitable, but a good
| translator should not have to need them everywhere.
| prerok wrote:
| I would be interested to know what you think about
| translating word plays.
|
| One example. In LOTR there is a hobbit named Meriadoc, but
| his friends call him Merry, which is a shorthand for his name
| but also carries meaning. In one translation into my
| language, the translator opted to translate Merry into
| "Srecko", which is close in meaning. The connection to the
| original name is lost and the translator put that in the
| translation notes to explain that there is a connection. The
| rest of the book(s) then always use the semantic meaning. I
| found that solution to be great for the given problem.
|
| Later translations didn't opt for that, instead keeping the
| shorthand, which would be just "Meri", which is a nice
| shorthand but completely drops the semantic meaning.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Word plays are by far among the most notoriously difficult
| pieces to translate, assuming it's even possible. Those
| kinds of situations are what I meant when I said some
| translation notes are simply inevitable.
|
| Worse still is there might not be a "correct" way. Like in
| your example, one preserves the context while the other
| preserves the name. I'm sure we can agree both of them are
| critically important, but we (probably) can't have both of
| them.
|
| Translating is a grueling job.
| pjc50 wrote:
| All according to *keikaku* (TN: keikaku means
| plan)
|
| This meme comes from the overuse of TNs in anime fansubs to
| explain obvious things, things that did not need explaining, or
| where there would be a perfectly straightforward English word
| that would do the job.
|
| Neologisms: do you mean neologism in the source language or the
| target language? This usually happens in the other direction,
| where the English words for things get copied straight over to
| other languages to refer to new items. There must be examples
| in the other direction but I can't immediately think of one.
| 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?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Universal grammar theorists freak out whenever this is said,
| but I think that's because those translated sentences and
| possibly even logic beneath it just aren't valid in that
| language and culture, in your case Dutch. Else everything
| should perfectly translate between any arbitrary languages
| without adding unnatural or uncomfortable components.
| adelie wrote:
| 'translationese' is a pretty common term for it. when you
| translate, it's really easy to mirror the source
| structure/syntax even when there's more idiomatic ways to say
| it in the target language.
| lampiaio wrote:
| Exactly. One simple example that I see all the time comes to
| mind:
|
| In English, "dozens of ____s" is a very common expression,
| particularly in news articles. In my local language, even
| though we do have a word for "dozen", it's much more common
| to say that in the form of "tens of ____s". Most of the
| "dozens of ____s" I see written in my language are from news
| articles that were (badly) translated from English.
| bojan wrote:
| I'm a non-native Dutch speaker and even I catch it, a sentence
| that looks like a 1-on-1 translation from English and than I
| have to think, no, this can't be proper Dutch.
|
| Exectly the same thing happens to my native language. What
| causes it? I guess the overwhelming viewership of English
| spoken to control, so people actually start thinking in
| English, and translate their thoughts badly when they need to
| express themselves in their native languages.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Only a _truly great_ translator can fundamentally alter the
| meaning of the source and get away with it. (Well played, Ted
| Woolsey.)
| Dwedit wrote:
| Except for the search-replace error (The Impresario on the
| Train!)
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Also the train didn't even have a "conductor" did it?! (Well
| probably not anymore after I suplexed it!!)
| lmm wrote:
| When did Woolsey alter the meaning and succeed? Sometimes he
| found a true translation that was underappreciated by an
| ignorant fanbase (the notorious spoony bard), sometimes he did
| the best he could while constrained by censorship that still
| compromised the results, and sometimes he straight-up screwed
| up.
| impulsivepuppet wrote:
| Written language is like the outer skin layer, a product of a
| living organism consisting of dead cells. Being a good translator
| is to have a good sense of what those organisms are.
| sdwr wrote:
| !
| sriku wrote:
| Hofstadter wrote a whole book on it - "Le ton beau de Marot"
| mzs wrote:
| Michael Kandel's translation to English of Stanislaw Lem's
| original Polish:
|
| https://mwichary.medium.com/seduced-shaggy-samson-snored-725...
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