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Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

blog.korny.info

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Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#11

Post by litenboll »

yawnxyz wrote: post #2

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 somet…

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)

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#13

Post by throwup238 »

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.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#14

Post by School-Cotton »

litenboll wrote: post #11
yawnxyz wrote: post #2

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 somet…

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 wo…

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!

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#15

Post by incompatible »

throwup238 wrote: post #13

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…

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.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#16

Post by dhosek »

ilamont wrote: post #10
yawnxyz wrote: post #2

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 somet…

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 b…

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.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#17

Post by dhosek »

yawnxyz wrote: post #2

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 somet…

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.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#18

Post by pomian »

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.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#19

Post by dhosek »

incompatible wrote: post #15
throwup238 wrote: post #13

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…

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.

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.
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