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What makes a translation great?

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Re: What makes a translation great?

#51

Post by pjc50 »

Daub wrote: post #35
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.

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#52

Post by 082349872349872 »

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 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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#53

Post by bojan »

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…

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#54

Post by philipov »

wolverine876 wrote: post #41
Daub wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#55

Post by dri_ft »

082349872349872 wrote: post #52
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 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.

Woefully glib.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#57

Post by 082349872349872 »

dri_ft wrote: post #55
082349872349872 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Woefully glib.

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

Re: What makes a translation great?

#58

Post by SunlitCat »

Dalewyn wrote: post #49
SunlitCat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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]: ht…

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.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#59

Post by dri_ft »

082349872349872 wrote: post #57
dri_ft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woefully glib.

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

>for more detail: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=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.

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