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Against Translation

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Re: Against Translation

#41

Post by kbenson »

mathgame wrote: post #36

As a native speaker of Russian, I often see lamentations from native Russian speakers how "real cool" phrases in print and movies when translated from Russian into English become ugly and simplistic as if rendered by a caveman. That's because a lot of Russian speakers are under the impression English is just a linear calque of Russian with English vocabulary[0]. But natural languages are not isomorphic to each other.…

That's why translation is its own art when done well. I've seen it done both ways, and both have their place.

I remember watching fan subbed anime around twenty years ago that kept all the idioms intact, but also but notes onscreen which you could pause to read, explaining a bit of what it meant and how it was supposed to be used.

I also remember more recently reading the dark forest trilogy, which is translated by an author that is amazing in his own right, and you can tell. That example is also extremely interesting because you can clearly feel a very non-English and non-western philosophy at play that the translator allows to come through, while also making everything very clear to an English reader.

Things like this are what translations of famous works in history (such as the Odyssey and the Illiad) are often referred to along with which translation it is. IIRC there was actually a new translation of some of these works within the last decade where it was translated to by much more modern English, which was supposed to be a very fun read. I always meant to get around to trying one of those, but honestly forgot until just now.

Re: Against Translation

#42

Post by cgag »

grzm wrote: post #25
porknubbins wrote: post #24

Having read Murakami first in English then in Japanese then years later again in Japanese after living in the culture each was a different but worthwhile experience. The last was in some ways least exciting because I realized that characters I had thought of as fascinatingly original or quirky just referred to tropes or stereotypes in the broader culture. I don’t think any literature really gives an accurate sense of…

Something I enjoyed about reading Murakami both in Japanese and in translation is that there are a couple of translations of "Norwegian Wood". Seeing how two translators (Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin) handled the translation into English gave me different views of how one could approach Japanese from an English perspective (my native tongue).

I feel like I once heard of Jay Rubin say something like, if you don't know japanese, you've never read a word of Murakami, you've read Rubin. I suppose it's obvious but it did make me stop and think about how distant japanese actually is from English.

I can't actually find any reference to him saying this though.

Re: Against Translation

#43

Post by causi »

rex_gallorum2 wrote: post #38
Causality1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is there's like five entirely separate theses that he kind of tries to ramble through in a single article that should've been split up. Some of his points are excellent but some of them are silly and childish, the products of someone who lives in academia and not the real world.

It's a narrative, not a technical manual. I found it beautifully written and filled with insight.

Beautifully written as it is, it's missing huge chunks of the picture. How can you talk that much about translation, natives and learned speakers, international and immersive culture, and never once mention the internet? This would have been an immensely powerful essay in 1985. Now it seems like a dusty tome in a corner of the library with a burned-out lightbulb. It has insights, sure, but he's not living in the same world we are.

Re: Against Translation

#44

Post by namelosw »

I found languages that are distant (English - Chinese) are generally harder to translate, and languages that are closer are much easier (English - Dutch, Chinese - Korean).

Some people are against translation, some people are okay with it, but it mostly boils down to the meaning of the text itself and the two languages that people are working with.

Things are easier to translate: 1) describe something objective like scientific fact or mechanism like "water is made up by hydrogen and oxygen" 2) communicate with commands like "pass me that bottle of water". It's possible to translate legal documents or business requirements faithfully if the translator knows the two of the language really well.

Things are hard to translate:

1) Puns: "Nothing right is left, and nothing left is right".

2) Aesthetics: Chinese people especially love to use the word "big/great/grand", it can be beautiful in Chinse but usually sounds awkward in English.

3) Contexts: like many Chinese people today would still use a lot of ancient idioms, which is a compact four-character format that describes an ancient story that happened millennials ago, and they're referring to the moral of those stories. Korean also use a lot of those idioms which make things much easier to translate.

4) Culture: This is the key difference, everybody knows it but it's always more than I assumed. Say there's a talk from a successful person talking about his experience - an American would probably focus on how hardworking he/she was, while a Chinese would very likely focus on rendering the bitterness he/she has encountered during the process (it has something to do with the Eastern Asian Buddhism background, and takes a lot of footnotes to make things clear to the Western audience). At the end of the day, it's not the languages that are different - it's the things that people talking about that are different.

Re: Against Translation

#45

Post by theresistor »

bombcar wrote: post #39
mathgame wrote: post #36

As a native speaker of Russian, I often see lamentations from native Russian speakers how "real cool" phrases in print and movies when translated from Russian into English become ugly and simplistic as if rendered by a caveman. That's because a lot of Russian speakers are under the impression English is just a linear calque of Russian with English vocabulary[0]. But natural languages are not isomorphic to each other.…

A good example of this is the translations of Asterix and Obelix - so much of the humor is puns which don’t translate, so they have to rework the jokes to make new puns - and it works surprisingly well.

A particularly interesting note is that Asterix and Obelix actually gets different English translations for the US and UK markets, and they frequently rework the puns differently, presumably due to idiomatic differences.

Re: Against Translation

#46

Post by doublepg23 »

bombcar wrote: post #39
mathgame wrote: post #36

As a native speaker of Russian, I often see lamentations from native Russian speakers how "real cool" phrases in print and movies when translated from Russian into English become ugly and simplistic as if rendered by a caveman. That's because a lot of Russian speakers are under the impression English is just a linear calque of Russian with English vocabulary[0]. But natural languages are not isomorphic to each other.…

A good example of this is the translations of Asterix and Obelix - so much of the humor is puns which don’t translate, so they have to rework the jokes to make new puns - and it works surprisingly well.

This happens frequently in anime translations as well.

Re: Against Translation

#47

Post by tryauuum »

mathgame wrote: post #36

As a native speaker of Russian, I often see lamentations from native Russian speakers how "real cool" phrases in print and movies when translated from Russian into English become ugly and simplistic as if rendered by a caveman. That's because a lot of Russian speakers are under the impression English is just a linear calque of Russian with English vocabulary[0]. But natural languages are not isomorphic to each other.…

I'd translate "I fought my way to the top" into "Я прохавал эту жизнь с низов". Though the latter reeks of gopnik mentality.

Re: Against Translation

#48

Post by stevekemp »

arepublicadoceu wrote: post #14

English is not my first language but I feel fluent enough that the majority of my book reading nowadays are in English, I studied for some time in a English speaking country and I watch movies and tv shows without subtitles. So, although I’m not a native speaker I feel deeply invested in the English language. All this to say that I still struggle with many rarely used words. Or archaic uses of the language. I constan…

To be honest you're not alone, I read a lot of different kind of things and recently I've been reading older books, or book set in the past at least.

I've had to lookup what an "omnibus" was when reading the Professor Moriarty Series, or a "charabanc" when reading Poirot.

Re: Against Translation

#49

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

arepublicadoceu wrote: post #14

English is not my first language but I feel fluent enough that the majority of my book reading nowadays are in English, I studied for some time in a English speaking country and I watch movies and tv shows without subtitles. So, although I’m not a native speaker I feel deeply invested in the English language. All this to say that I still struggle with many rarely used words. Or archaic uses of the language. I constan…

I can't speak about French, but IMHO a lot of what Russian classical authors describe can only be deeply understood if you grew up in the region and have seen it with your own eyes. Mentality-wise, I don't think anything really has changed in the last 200 years. It still resonates as strongly as it probably had back then.

Re: Against Translation

#50

Post by Freak_NL »

stevekemp wrote: post #48
arepublicadoceu wrote: post #14

English is not my first language but I feel fluent enough that the majority of my book reading nowadays are in English, I studied for some time in a English speaking country and I watch movies and tv shows without subtitles. So, although I’m not a native speaker I feel deeply invested in the English language. All this to say that I still struggle with many rarely used words. Or archaic uses of the language. I constan…

To be honest you're not alone, I read a lot of different kind of things and recently I've been reading older books, or book set in the past at least. I've had to lookup what an "omnibus" was when reading the Professor Moriarty Series, or a "charabanc" when reading Poirot.

'Omnibus' may be more familiar, but 'charabanc' will likely be challenging to younger native speakers too. And then in this category there are the 'brougham', 'phaeton', 'trap', 'hansom', and 'dog-cart', the latter of which can of course refer to a cart pulled by a dog, but often means yet another type of horse-drawn carriage.

I fully expect most readers nowadays will just go 'ah, they got into some conveyance pulled by horses' rather than having a clear image of the specific carriage referred to.

Reading works by Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, etc. really expands your horsey vocabulary.

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