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Thread: Works impossible to translate?

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    Works impossible to translate?

    Anyone speak a foreign language? What authors do you consider to be difficult or impossible to translate. For English there's a lot but mainly - with the exception of Shakespeare, that's given - I'd say Joyce and Fitzgerald (for prose). And Goethe, especially Goethe, and Kafka for German. I've heard Flaubert in French is great and Gogol and Pushkin for Russian are also great. This is a subject the interests me a lot, I'm really thinking of learning Russian...Nabokov's college lectures have convinced me it's worth the struggle. Can anyone comment on this?

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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Most Chinese poets are lost in translation. The art of metrics is so advanced in China compared to the west and it is even lost on contemporary Chinese people, who do not know how to flip the sounds to make them fit the older pronunciations.

    Amongst the most difficult would probably be Du Fu's regulated verses, despite his popularity (though his Yue Fu poems, which are more popular in the west, are translatable). Wang Wei is also incredibly difficult, especially his couplets, which in Chinese pair perfectly (parallel sounds, characters and progressions). I am yet to find a decent translation of Ci poets, but they are able to translate in terms of meaning more easily (antithesis is less an obligation in the form) though rhythmically all is lost or converted.

    Still, the biggest problem facing Chinese poets and authors in translation is that nobody cares or has the background knowledge to read them. You could translate a real Daoist document, but the number of footnotes you would need would put almost any common reader off (without them, the document is nonsensical and untranslatable).

    The interesting thing is the reliance on italic phonetics as nouns and concepts in translation. It basically means the translator felt no equivalent was available, which is an interesting concept. IT happens a great deal (though I have almost completely stopped reading translation, so I cannot say for trends after 2009 or so).

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    A 40 Bag To Freedom E.A Rumfield's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bobb328 View Post
    Anyone speak a foreign language? What authors do you consider to be difficult or impossible to translate. For English there's a lot but mainly - with the exception of Shakespeare, that's given - I'd say Joyce and Fitzgerald (for prose). And Goethe, especially Goethe, and Kafka for German. I've heard Flaubert in French is great and Gogol and Pushkin for Russian are also great. This is a subject the interests me a lot, I'm really thinking of learning Russian...Nabokov's college lectures have convinced me it's worth the struggle. Can anyone comment on this?
    Why is Fitzgerald impossible to translate, he's a **** writer. I think most authors are well translated it depends on what you prefer. Some translators choose to capture what was really being said making the text more readable, others choose to go more word for word which in my view makes for an awkward read.
    Her hair was like a flowing cascade and her breasts were real awesome also.
    My ***** Better Have My Money by Fly Guy
    My ***** better have my money.
    Through rain, sleet, or snow,
    my ho better have my money.
    Not half, not some, but all my cash.
    Because if she don't, I'll put my foot dead in her ***.

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    the way to hump a cow is not
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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by E.A Rumfield View Post
    Why is Fitzgerald impossible to translate, he's a **** writer. I think most authors are well translated it depends on what you prefer. Some translators choose to capture what was really being said making the text more readable, others choose to go more word for word which in my view makes for an awkward read.
    Fitzgerald was an excellent author, regardless of your dislike of his works. As for the difficulty - well, he has a very precise choice of words in his work, as if he thought each word through over and over again, which his manuscripts would indicate was the case. As for difficulty of translation? Well, the linguistic component would be tricky, but the vast majority of Gatsby is readily translatable. The task would be to find a translator as good in their target language as Fitzgerald was with English.

    Still, translation out of English is the silliest of discussion topics on translation. The vast majority of works come into English, not out of English. English being readily read almost everywhere as a lingua franca, it is more interesting to see how works come into English I would wager. Serious students of English literature (those that would read Joyce, for instance) are probably going to read English already.

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    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cafolini View Post
    the way to hump a cow is not
    to get yourself a stool
    but draw a line around the spot
    and call it beautifool
    E E Cummings
    Not FUL then. Cool.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

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    Registered User Corona's Avatar
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    As an Italian, I have to say it's widely known Joyce is nearly impossible to be translated. His Finnegans' Wake was never translated and the only partially successfull attempt of translating it was accomplished by Luigi Schenoni who had to "recreate" words, so in a way the only way of rending it is doing the same sort of work done by Joyce, that's nearly impossibile.

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    Voice of Chaos & Anarchy
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    I was just thinking that a translation of Finnegans Wake would be an excellent joke. If I were fluent in another language, preferably one that does not use the Latin alphabet, and I could find funding, then I would have the work of a lifetime, even ir I live to be one thousand.

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    Registered User Corona's Avatar
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    Yea, of course it would be a lifetime-work! Luigi Schenoni never did accomplish the "translation"- rewriting - of the whole FW as he died before completing it!

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    Finnegans Wake was translated to a few languages. The problem is not that is not translatable, the problem it loses the appeal. Sort like what JBI said about chinese translation and I notice it is true for arabic too.

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    They might have been able to put each wordinto another language, but the work could not be translated, unless someone completely rewrote it in that langguage.

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    Registered User Corona's Avatar
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    I tend to agree, but it depends on what it means to "translate". Taking my statement with a grain of salt, as I've not read FW, I must say the problem with FW is probably that an efficient translation wouldn't do justice to Joyce's intentions and to his stylistic means. The problem is that in order to render the power of that work one should probably be able enough not to just translate it, but to "recreate" word by word his linguistic skills.
    The question still remains: how much does a translated version of FW convey the original's polysemy and richness?
    Last edited by Corona; 12-07-2012 at 02:40 PM.

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    Registered User Calidore's Avatar
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    Pretty much anything involving language-specific wordplay and puns would be difficult to translate. The French Asterix comics, for one example, were probably largely rewritten by their translators.

    Would "Who's on First?" be translatable?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M
    You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi

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    Translating is re-writing in another language, PeterL. You may say that that, as Corona suggests, the translation is a murder, but it is not untranslatable.

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    Translations are mostly possible. What happens is that idiomatic expressions often do not occur in the language to which a work is being translated. Usage is also a problem. It is impossible to account with fidelity. So, translating is an art.

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