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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

#51

Post by wheybags »

wcrossbow wrote: post #46
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…

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!

"Well, we came this far" maybe?

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

#52

Post by dri_ft »

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.

For what it's worth, he also uses 'whom' at the start of a sentence, correctly according to formal grammar but where most English speakers would intuitively use 'who'. That level of fussing over nominative/accusative can be the give-away sign of a classical grammar stickler, though equally it can just indicate a native speaker of a cased language such as German.

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

#53

Post by farnerup »

thombat wrote: post #27
rvba wrote: post #25

In Polish there is this saying that "faithful translations are not beautiful and beautiful translations are not faithfull". The translator always adds a bit of own style.

Tove Jannson, the author of the Moomin stories, credited her English translator with improving the originals, because after the necessary dialogue about the true meaning of the text she had a better understanding of her own text and wanted that preserved in the Finnish.

She wrote in Swedish though, not Finnish.

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

#54

Post by emodendroket »

lproven wrote: post #36
emodendroket wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I find it very plausible that a spud writing about Latin literature observes that rule.

A "spud"? That manages to seem both incomprehensible and very offensive at once, which an impressive trick. And not impressive in a good way.

I am not really sure what your issue is. You don’t know what it means but think it sounds bad? So I’m a bad person for using it?

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

#55

Post by sdwr »

lgeorget wrote: post #9

Funnily, and ironically, enough, as a native French speaker, I would never translate "ce ne sont pas mes oignons" (litt. "those are not my onions") as "it's not my cup of tea". To me, it actually means "it's none of my business".

Never heard that expression before, love it.

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

#56

Post by ppseafield »

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…

I wonder if the origin is related to 'crossing the Rubicon', which has a similar meaning (although perhaps less prescriptive).

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

#57

Post by colanderman »

tetris11 wrote: post #19
evrimoztamur wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Turkish, we call it 'chicken translation' or 'tavuk çevirme.' While that normally means rotisserie chicken, a few places badly translated it, and the name stuck for word-for-word.

I still think sometomes about how Döner got its name. I can just picture a German guy walking past a plate of the thin shredded meat, and then asking someone "what is that?" followed by the customer pointing at the rotating meat stack, and the chef shrugging and saying "yeah, it spins."

That is quite literally the etymology of the vasistas window (a.k.a. transom window): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vasistas

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

#58

Post by colanderman »

sdwr wrote: post #55
lgeorget wrote: post #9

Funnily, and ironically, enough, as a native French speaker, I would never translate "ce ne sont pas mes oignons" (litt. "those are not my onions") as "it's not my cup of tea". To me, it actually means "it's none of my business".

Never heard that expression before, love it.

"Not my circus, not my monkeys" is my favorite English idiom of this meaning.

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

#59

Post by poulsbohemian »

schoen wrote: post #17
poulsbohemian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For over a thousand years, nobody has been brought up to speak [Latin] naturally at home I know it is a very small number of people, and perhaps not Latin as it was spoken in Rome, but I think an argument could be made that Romansh is a direct descendant of Latin still actively spoken today.

Is there some way that it's a more direct descendant of Latin than any other Romance language is?

I'm not a linguist nor a Romansh speaker but my understanding has always been that at its core it is very much still a Latin dialect, thus I'm surprised by all the downvote hate I received.

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

#60

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

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…

English has “might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb” I suppose?
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