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“A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

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Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#41

Post by andrepd »

tgv wrote: post #34
wcrossbow wrote: post #7

We have a fun way to describe mechanical, word for word translations in Spanish. It's called _from lost to the river_, that's the direct translation of _de perdidos al rio_, which is a saying meaning that once you have embarked onto a silly/dangerous/nonsense business you might just as well go through with it. A sort of reverse sunken cost fallacy. Of course, the fun is in that it makes no sense once translated. I fi…

Which reminds me of another source of translation errors. Once in a village bar, I saw ensaladilla de cangrejo translated as crap salad.

Translation errors in small-town restaurants across Portugal, Spain, and Italy is a bread and butter of my group chat's memes.

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#42

Post by makeitdouble »

numpad0 wrote: post #24
makeitdouble wrote: post #18

> Translation is simply the art of taking something in one language and expressing it accurately in another. This article seems to adequate translation with adaptation, which is the crux of the issue I think. In one case you might want to convey the exact words expressed regardless of the nuances, social context and "making it sound right". Your primary goal is to convey information, however clumsy it can feel as a r…

> Your primary goal is to convey information, however clumsy it can feel as a result. > if it's for research purpose for instance, accuracy will prime. That explains couple weird behaviors I've seen regarding translations. Right, right... Translation is like, you have two distinct interpreter machines, and the input for one, that you want to run on the other. You must ensure the output of both machines to match. "Acc…

Yes, it's always tricky. I think an alternative point where translators go for accuracy, everything else be damned, is for cultural artifacts and specialized language.

For instance when reading programming books, having english words like "core dump" need to either be translated in the exact matching technical word in the target language (which the reader might actually not understand better than "core dump"...english is my second language and I have no idea what it should be officially called in my mother tongue...), or be kept in english. Going for an approximation that conveys the feeling won't be useful to the reader.

The same sometimes applies to real word conversation translations where the speaker mixes and matches languages (engrish being part of that). Translating the engrish or the foreign words used in the speech (in particular when the foreign words come from the very language we're trying to translate into) will make it more difficult to understand for the reader, especially if they could have understood the nuances of the original script.

I think of this when I see the english "déjà-vu" translated into french: it will often be left untouched with some signage to convey it was in the original script as is, and it would be worse to have it translated for more immersion or fluency.

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#43

Post by dghf »

stevula wrote: post #6
triyambakam wrote: post #2

> even though he seems tacitly to accept its inferiority to Greek literature I would have said "seems to tacitly accept" instead of "seems tacitly to accept" I wonder if the author purposely avoids the split infinitive. I've heard Latin enthusiasts like to prescribe that onto English, because it's not grammatical in Latin. But maybe that's just the author's English. I don't think it's wrong.

It is not only ungrammatical but impossible to split a Latin infinitive. Latin infinitives are a single word.

Point of pedantry: some Latin infinitives are single words -- present active, present passive, and perfect active. Perfect passive, future active and future passive require two.

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#44

Post by jxf »

pavlov wrote: post #33
wcrossbow wrote: post #7

We have a fun way to describe mechanical, word for word translations in Spanish. It's called _from lost to the river_, that's the direct translation of _de perdidos al rio_, which is a saying meaning that once you have embarked onto a silly/dangerous/nonsense business you might just as well go through with it. A sort of reverse sunken cost fallacy. Of course, the fun is in that it makes no sense once translated. I fi…

> “direct translation of _de perdidos al rio_, which is a saying meaning that once you have embarked onto a silly/dangerous/nonsense business you might just as well go through with it” Essentially the same saying with the river metaphor exists in Finnish (ojasta allikkoon) but its implied meaning is the opposite of what you’re describing. There’s no suggestion of “might as well”, it’s just: “you were in trouble alrea…

It sounds like the English analogy might be "out of the frying pan and into the fire".

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#45

Post by makeitdouble »

082349872349872 wrote: post #22
makeitdouble wrote: post #18

> Translation is simply the art of taking something in one language and expressing it accurately in another. This article seems to adequate translation with adaptation, which is the crux of the issue I think. In one case you might want to convey the exact words expressed regardless of the nuances, social context and "making it sound right". Your primary goal is to convey information, however clumsy it can feel as a r…

"translations are like [redacted]; they may be beautiful, or they may be faithful, but unless you're extremely lucky, not both..." (does anyone have a more 21st century-friendly substitute for the redacted plural noun?)

I'd go with "no-make selfies"

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#46

Post by wcrossbow »

pavlov wrote: post #33
wcrossbow wrote: post #7

We have a fun way to describe mechanical, word for word translations in Spanish. It's called _from lost to the river_, that's the direct translation of _de perdidos al rio_, which is a saying meaning that once you have embarked onto a silly/dangerous/nonsense business you might just as well go through with it. A sort of reverse sunken cost fallacy. Of course, the fun is in that it makes no sense once translated. I fi…

> “direct translation of _de perdidos al rio_, which is a saying meaning that once you have embarked onto a silly/dangerous/nonsense business you might just as well go through with it” Essentially the same saying with the river metaphor exists in Finnish (ojasta allikkoon) but its implied meaning is the opposite of what you’re describing. There’s no suggestion of “might as well”, it’s just: “you were in trouble alrea…

I was slightly unfair to my fellow nationals. It's not that you just go through with something silly just because, but rather that uneasy feeling one has when reaching the point of no return on some venture and you have to pick between backing out or pushing through with the original plan. When the latter wins you cheer up and scream ¡de perdidos al rio!

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#47

Post by archon1410 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #22
makeitdouble wrote: post #18

> Translation is simply the art of taking something in one language and expressing it accurately in another. This article seems to adequate translation with adaptation, which is the crux of the issue I think. In one case you might want to convey the exact words expressed regardless of the nuances, social context and "making it sound right". Your primary goal is to convey information, however clumsy it can feel as a r…

"translations are like [redacted]; they may be beautiful, or they may be faithful, but unless you're extremely lucky, not both..." (does anyone have a more 21st century-friendly substitute for the redacted plural noun?)

The redacted word here is "women", to save the uninitiated like me some trouble.

One can use "Instagram posts", which are posted for their beauty, but are thought to not be faithful reproduction of the poster's life.

GPTs should excel in this task of finding more substitutes. Maybe try asking it?

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#48

Post by ZeroGravitas »

082349872349872 wrote: post #22
makeitdouble wrote: post #18

> Translation is simply the art of taking something in one language and expressing it accurately in another. This article seems to adequate translation with adaptation, which is the crux of the issue I think. In one case you might want to convey the exact words expressed regardless of the nuances, social context and "making it sound right". Your primary goal is to convey information, however clumsy it can feel as a r…

"translations are like [redacted]; they may be beautiful, or they may be faithful, but unless you're extremely lucky, not both..." (does anyone have a more 21st century-friendly substitute for the redacted plural noun?)

"lovers" seems the obvious substitute in this context.

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#49

Post by Tor3 »

Ekaros wrote: post #37
Tor3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young someone decided to publish Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine in my native language, as a series of short books (i.e. not like a magazine at all). As this was a series, the publisher used a relatively small group of translators to translate all the issues. After reading a number of the books I started to notice that I could easily tell who had done the translation, and it was at that point I sta…

Where it becomes hard is non-English scifi. If you don't understand the language, do you pick the English or the native translation of for example Polish or Russian? Specially when those native translations are likely not too bad, albeit horribly expensive at this point.

Yes, that's a problem. I can read English as easily as my native language, but other languages like Spanish, German or Italian I can only read slowly - and if I read slowly I don't get "into" the story. So yes, I wish I could read other originals. I have read English translations of other languages (which is much easier to find than translations to my native language), and the feeling is that.. it's a translation. Most of what I read is by native English authors though.

Re: “A Great Ox Stands on My Tongue”: The Pitfalls of Latin Translation

#50

Post by Sharlin »

jxf wrote: post #44
pavlov wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “direct translation of _de perdidos al rio_, which is a saying meaning that once you have embarked onto a silly/dangerous/nonsense business you might just as well go through with it” Essentially the same saying with the river metaphor exists in Finnish (ojasta allikkoon) but its implied meaning is the opposite of what you’re describing. There’s no suggestion of “might as well”, it’s just: “you were in trouble alrea…

It sounds like the English analogy might be "out of the frying pan and into the fire".

It is indeed the direct English equivalent.
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