[HN Gopher] Translating my Grandfather's biograpy
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Translating my Grandfather's biograpy
Author : pavel_lishin
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-11-22 18:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.korny.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.korny.info)
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Translation has always been interesting to me as I speak
| Mandarin, Swedish, and English.
|
| I think a lot of subtlety gets lost in translations, even from
| person to person. Is the more "academically correct" translation
| better, or is the one that captures the slang and the vibe in
| modern terms and memes in a way we can _feel_ the speaker more
| correct?
|
| I think most people who choose the former look at translations as
| something that is absolute and objective, but I think
| translations, like most communication, needs to be subjective to
| both the speaker and the reader.
|
| And just as humans can get each of these "wrong," LLMs can and
| will, too
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| It depends on the intent.
|
| If I want to learn about a culture and language, an objective
| translation is what I want. E.g. I want to learn the idioms of
| the time and place, not have them changed by the whim of the
| translator to something similar but perhaps changing the intent
|
| If I want to persuade or illuminate the topic, then by all
| means a more approachable translation with modern idiom is more
| useful.
|
| An example I know of is, an early Dolby cassette recording from
| a Japanese source had the marketing copy "Smells of the lamp of
| high technology!" Which is meaningless, even humorous to a
| Westerner. Not good marketing copy.
|
| But I enjoyed learning something of Japanese culture. That
| things could 'smell of' something as a way of imagining them.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I look at translations as works by themselves. I don't think
| it's possible to recreate the feeling of experiencing a work
| in its original language without actually learning that
| language. One truly cannot experience Shakespeare unless one
| reads him in the original Klingon.
|
| That doesn't mean that translations are useless, but you're
| kidding yourself if you think you understand the phrase that
| translated to "smells of" in the same way that a Japanese
| person would. It's evocative to you, but native speakers may
| not even think of it as a metaphor. As an example, do you
| think of a human face when someone refers to the "face" of a
| clock? Do you imagine an organist when someone says they are
| "pulling out all the stops"?
|
| Only real Japanese speakers can experience works of art in
| Japanese, just as Germans who don't speak English can't
| actually experience Hasselhoff the way Americans do, try as
| they might. People can create works of art inspired by the
| originals, and call them translations, but they are new
| works.
| dmurray wrote:
| I would watch the movie adaptation of a book I enjoyed, or
| vice versa, but I wouldn't read a book in translation that
| I'd already read in the original, and I don't think many
| people would. (I might read the original after the
| translation).
|
| So in some sense a translation is less of a unique work
| than a film adaptation.
|
| Classical scholars are an exception here, who might read
| Homer in half a dozen translations. But that's for two
| reasons: firstly, classical scholars are likely translators
| themselves, or at least students of the art of translation;
| secondly, there are only so many great Ancient Greek texts
| to read in the original.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| To each their own. I've read books in my second language
| that were translations of English books I'd already read.
| To be fair, that had been mostly pedagogical. I've also
| read multiple translations of the Illiad, for example,
| and don't know any ancient Greek. I've also read
| modernizations of Shakespeare.
|
| Art is a complex thing, and doesn't really respect the
| commodity form. The same "work" can be totally different
| to people with different experiences, skills, neuroses,
| etc. You can read the same book twice and enjoy it, or
| not, differently each time. People enjoy live music
| exactly because each performance is different. Ultimately
| we're all trying to wring meaning from our lives, and art
| is a tool to give you some leverage in that work.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > E.g. I want to learn the idioms of the time and place, not
| have them changed by the whim of the translator to something
| similar but perhaps changing the intent
|
| But how can you learn the meaning of an idiom if it's
| translated literally? For example, even in context, "and now
| we have the salad" can be pretty baffling.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Read more I guess, until a variety of contexts makes the
| meaning more clear.
| card_zero wrote:
| That's the etymology of _redolent._ To be redolent of high
| technology, taken literally, means to smell similar.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Cool! But then there's the 'lamp' part. The idiom is a
| little more indirect - doesn't 'smell of' high technology.
| Just smells of it's lamp.
| syntaxing wrote:
| It's also way harder for Chinese too. Different regions have
| different dialects despite using the same writing system.
| Different dialects usually mean different culture which means
| they use different words in different ways like slangs.
| avar wrote:
| To add to this, things can also get "lost in translation" even
| if you're reading something in your native language.
|
| If you're reading something written in the 19th or early 20th
| century then even something you think you understand might be
| going over your head, because it's referencing some cultural
| context obvious to anyone at the time.
| ilamont wrote:
| I am also a Mandarin speaker, and a very interesting thing
| happens when I try to read classical Chinese by dictionary or
| my modern understanding of the language: It's vague, lacking
| nuance, and basically unreadable. It requires very talented
| translators and skilled academics to make readable modern
| translations.
|
| For classical Chinese poetry, the best English translations
| have been other poets, even though most have been unable to
| read any Chinese! Check out "Lament of the Frontier Guard" by
| Tang dynasty poet Li Bo (Li Bai ), as written by Ezra Pound
| more than 100 years ago:
|
| By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,
|
| Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
|
| Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn.
|
| I climb the towers and towers to watch out the barbarous land:
|
| Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert.
|
| There is no wall left to this village.
|
| Bones white with a thousand frosts,
|
| High heaps, covered with trees and grass;
|
| Who brought this to pass? ...
|
| https://scalar.fas.harvard.edu/resources-for-loss/lament-of-...
|
| I am sure professional translators would find issues on
| technical and stylistic points, but could any be as evocative
| with their own translations?
|
| I think we have to be prepared to give LLMs some leeway with
| language ... or empower humans (both editors and readers) with
| the tools to "tune" the translations as appropriate to their
| tastes, understanding, and subjective needs. This is basically
| what Korny did, trying different tools and consulting other
| humans as needed with certain colloquialisms.
| dhosek wrote:
| Translating poetry is, in many ways, an impossibility, which
| is why the best translations are by poets and not linguists
| as they're essentially writing a new poem with the skeleton
| of the original.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Relevant and entertaining: Why Shakespeare Could Never Have
| Been French by Tom Scott
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnGvH8fUUc
| litenboll wrote:
| I thought about something similar today. My kid (2.5 years)
| watches some stuff on Netflix which is translated to Swedish
| from English. It's very obvious that the voice over and
| subtitles are done by different teams/companies, because they
| often mismatch. What I find more interesting is how they
| differ, and it's related to the "slang vs academic" but it's
| about culture and context. Stuff like word puns that doesn't
| work when translated directly, or named being "translated" in
| one but used directly in the other. Honestly I think it's
| extremely lazy and cheap on Netflix' part, for adults it's one
| thing, but for kids it's pretty confusing. (My son is not
| reading the subtitles yet though)
| umanwizard wrote:
| I was watching a German show on Amazon Prime with both German
| audio and subtitles. I was confused as to why on practically
| every line, the wording had been changed despite the meaning
| being similar.
|
| I eventually figured out that the German subtitles had been
| machine-translated from the English subtitles!
| marc_abonce wrote:
| I've always noticed this (even before Netflix) and I always
| assumed that it's because the dub is meant to somewhat match
| the character's mouth movements, whereas the subtitles don't
| have such restriction. So I always assume that the subtitles
| have the more accurate translation compared to the dub.
| dhosek wrote:
| There's a great essay by Lydia Davis which appeared in the
| Paris Review in 2014 (I really should have a better citation,
| but oh well), which talks about the challenges of translation.
| To a certain extent, even if you're writing something original,
| you're still writing a translation in terms of trying to find a
| way to express the idea in your mind within the limitations of
| the words available to you.
| cryptozeus wrote:
| Great read ! My father has published 12 books in his native
| language, I am in process of converting them in English using
| chatgpt. This gives me idea !!
| throwup238 wrote:
| I've got my great-grandfather's autobiography and one of the
| striking features is the language. It's extremely matter of fact
| with very little prose to connect his life together, just a lot
| of details like "moved to X in year Y" and "went to school for X
| between Y and Z years". It's got a lot of facts, but little
| coherent narrative.
|
| If someone is important enough to warrant a biographer they'll
| put more work into the narrative but old autobiographies seem to
| be very mechanical records.
| incompatible wrote:
| Isn't a narrative just a way of presenting facts? Given facts,
| you can write a narrative. The more facts you have, the more
| detailed the narrative can be.
| dhosek wrote:
| Not exactly. Peter Turchi came up with the analogy of
| mapmaking for narrative which really goes a long way to
| making sense of this since in both it's about being able to
| find a sensible way to connect the details in a usable way.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| In some regions of the expanding USA about 150 years ago, a
| printed record of families in an area was sometimes printed and
| bound as a formal book. Part of the publishing model for some
| of those books was to solicit money from a person or family.
| For a larger price you could have a longer and more prominent
| description. Naturally some publishers had no trouble making
| flattering or "puffed up" entries, for a price. The simple
| entries in a book like that often were a listing of facts like
| names, birthdates, occupation or death date, and not much else.
| pomian wrote:
| That is an interesting project. I would like to take that to the
| next level, where translation is the easy part. It's converting
| old handwritten letters, journals, and texts with now archaic
| cursive, into text. We have fascinating material from before
| WWII, in various languages - but trying to decipher it
| accurately, is a challenge. As the older generations died off, it
| is hard to find anyone to read that text.
| fjfaase wrote:
| My wife has done a lot of genealogical research and has
| experience with reading cursive text going back to about 1700
| in both Dutch and German. (Many Dutch people have German
| ancestors.) A lot depends on the quality of the scans. You can
| contact me through the email address mentioned on my website,
| which is mentioned in my profile.
| wslh wrote:
| Most probably the author knows this but there are some photos and
| information here [1]. His grandfather is a member of "The
| Righteous Among the Nations" [2].
|
| [1] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/sietsma.html
|
| [2] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous.html
| haensi wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this, I was not aware of it and I'm
| currently in the process of learning Hebrew, dealing with the
| intersection of (Jewish and Christian) culture and technology.
|
| One example is a GPT version [1] fine tuned on texts of Sefaria
| [2].
|
| The initiator was in direct contact with Sam Altman to
| kickstart it. (Personal communication).
|
| He talks about this publicly [3]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/Sefaria/AppliedAI [2]:
| https://www.sefaria.org/texts [3]:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZkJl2fk0rc
| korny wrote:
| Good find - Henk and Hein were actually cousins of my
| grandfather. His eldest two sons (my uncles) were also involved
| with the resistance, though this only came out recently.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Very interesting. Goed gedaan!
|
| Note the title of the book should be _Een Waarlijk Vrije_ ; i.e.
| the last word has a j.
|
| Curious that DeepL translated "Gaf geen kamp" to "gave a camp",
| since "geen" means no/none. It seemed to totally ignore it or
| reverse it's meaning.
|
| Regarding "droving" perhaps "herding" might be a more familiar
| term. And it might be more accurate; I suspect that long distance
| herding wasn't a common thing in the Netherlands.
| korny wrote:
| Oops - that's a typo, I hope I got it right elsewhere.
|
| "Droving" is admittedly a bit silly - herding probably makes
| more sense.
| stared wrote:
| I've used AI models a few times, primarily for translating song
| lyrics for personal enjoyment or translating Facebook posts and
| other content.
|
| When it comes to translation, context matters a lot. Translating
| a single paragraph without considering the broader context is
| often suboptimal. A better approach is to provide additional
| material that gives the translator more background information
| and the overarching goal.
|
| One effective method I've found is using the Cursor editor:
|
| 1. Organize your content in a directory, ideally as Markdown
| files.
|
| 2. Include clear instructions on the style and purpose of the
| translation. For example, a literal, word-for-word translation
| differs from one aimed at conveying emotions or artistic intent.
| A .cursorrules file can provide global context and guidelines.
| When I edit blog posts, I use this one:
| https://github.com/stared/stared.github.io/blob/main/.cursor....
| For a biography, it would be different.
|
| 3. Translate paragraph by paragraph, with some manual oversight,
| to ensure consistency and quality.
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