How do you feel about reading translated works of literature/writing?
Do you have a certain reservation or worry that much has been lost in translation?
To those who understand another world language: have you ever read something in its original language and then read it in English (or any other translation)? If so, how much a difference was there?
If it comes to English, Spanish I don`t like reading translations.
It is not possible that a translation be as good as original text.
I remember that I was really satisfied when I managed to read some poems in German and French at school.
well then how do you feel about the translation from Italian to English as in the Divine Comedy ,, Dantes Inferno, written in Italian and trecet form?? do you think something was lost there????
Agreed, no Polish text is as good in translation. Don't even bother trying to read them or translate them if you can't read the original Polish. It's just not worth it.
Other languages like French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, and Persian benefit quite a bit more and hardly anything is lost. There are many beautiful translations from those languages, but again, none from Polish. It's a mystery.
Last edited by mortalterror; 05-19-2013 at 04:31 AM.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
I think that there are many elementes impossible to translate such as very slight difference in meaning of words what can be considered as synonimes.Originally Posted by Goodman Brown
Lem is the most often translated polish author as far as I know. Szymborska and Miłosz too.
Well yeah, but nobody likes them do they? They're translations, and they can't possibly be any good in another language.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
I am not a big fan of Lem. But Szymborska and Miłosz sound very good in English too.
Just on Milosz, I know he translates a lot of his own poems into English and gets his English translator (whoever is doing that volume) to help him smooth it out. I'm always slightly more encouraged when I know a poet has had a role in translating his own work.
Vladimir: (sententious.) To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.
They're a necessary evil. The only way to avoid them is if you plan to avoid literature in the dozens of literary languages that you are inevitably never going to get around to learning. I can now read literature in a few different languages and it feels so much better not having to doubt the accuracy or sense of what you are reading. I have some ambitious plans for language learning and if it all works out I'll be able to read literature in all the major languages and will only have to fall back on translations for smaller languages like Hungarian, Czech, Malayalam and the countless others.
Miłosz wrote also history of polish literature for his american students.
I wonder why Polish would be harder to translate than other languages.
The difficulty of the Polish making sense for the times was that they were rebellious against the fascist Roman Catholics. And they were not integrated to evolve beyond that. The result was that some of them went against Hitler's tanks on horseback. This prompted the world to start making mockery of the Polish. Stupid jokes were bountiful.
How do you sink a Polish submarine?
You just put it in the water.
What is a guy with a lit match taped to his forehead?
A Polish miner.
And so on...and on.
But I agree with Hannah that Polish literature, from those who understood the problem, was beautiful.
My eyes were opened to how much changes in the process of translation when I read Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Each poem was shown in multiple translations. The variation between those translations was astonishing. It bothered me for a while, but now I've accepted it. A great book in Spanish well translated makes for a great book in English, its as simple as that. It would assuredly be an immensely satisfying thing to be able to read all of one's favourite books in their original language, but I just don't have the time to master Spanish, French, German, ancient Greek and Russian.
A few years ago I went through a language learning phase and tried to teach myself Japanese, Sanskrit and German all at the same time. Didn't work out. Now I limit myself to a modest study of Spanish and just enough to maintain the basic level of French that I have. Spanish is the one I am most eager to learn, as I'd like to travel to South America, and I want to read Don Quixote and One Hundred Years of Solitude in the original Spanish before I die.
Last edited by Darcy88; 05-19-2013 at 06:11 PM.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Darcy88,
Perhaps you will find this video inspirational. This man's dedication to language-learning is almost superhuman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oudgdh6tl00
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