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What makes a translation great?

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Re: What makes a translation great?

#31

Post by nataliste »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

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 Japa…

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#32

Post by SunlitCat »

soundnote wrote: post #27
pjc50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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, respon…

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#34

Post by adelie »

wkjagt wrote: post #16

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…

'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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#35

Post by Daub »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

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 Japa…

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#36

Post by sureIy »

kolme wrote: post #5

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 m…

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”

Re: What makes a translation great?

#37

Post by adelie »

pjc50 wrote: post #22
Dalewyn wrote: post #8

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…

> 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…

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#38

Post by prerok »

Dalewyn wrote: post #18
feikname wrote: post #10

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.

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.

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 "Srečko", 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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#39

Post by candiodari »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

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 Japa…

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#40

Post by wolverine876 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

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 Japa…

> 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.)

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