Translated books

[*Mina*]

The other day while browsing some books in the library, I came along an English edition of la Divina Commedia. I read some pages but I could not go on reading, it was awful. All the rhymes and images got lost during the translation process. All it was left was the account of a man's journey through hell. That was it. You couldn't go deeper than that, the fact that it had been translated did not allow you to contemplate the true magnificence of Dante's work.

This got me thinking that how could someone possible judge a book, if that person hasn't read it in it's true form? there is no way to get the complete picture of El Quijote in any other language but Spanish, or to read Poe in anything but English. It's sad because when you think in a translated book you read and absolutely loved, you realized that you will never fully appreciate that book until you learn the language it was original written in.

Has anyone experience this kind of frustration?

[Mockingbird_z]

well i understand your frustration and luckily there is a way out - learn at least 4 languages (depending on what books you want to read in original).
Still i think that prose is usually translated with as little mistakes as possible especially nowadays when we have modern dictionaries and handbooks. Certainly a translated book loses its charm (of being written in a foreign language) though at the same time artistic translation can also bе a masterpiece (because it takes a certain talent to be able to translate a book and get across the original idea and beauty (within the resources of a foreign language the book is being translated into).
still if you realize you are missing out on something important in the book and it is because the book is translated - then learn the language. isn’t it motivation to do it?

[PeterL]

I understand your annoyance at that translation, and many translations are very bad. On the other hand there are translations that are very good. The best examples of good translations are novels by Nabokov, Eco, and others who were multilingual. Nabokov is a special case, because he learned Russian around age 8, after having become fluent in French and English. Umberto Eco is adequately fluent in English that he has written books, essays, etc. in Italian, English, and another language.

[mortalterror]

I understand your frustration, however I wouldn't get so hung up on perceiving the exact truth, exactly as it was originally intended of anything. When I read Shakespeare in English, my native language, I'm missing things simply because I'm not a sixteenth century inhabitant of London. My understanding is that Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy are rather archaic even for the languages they are written in, and so much time has passed that you can never get the whole of them.

The fact of the matter is that languages have an expiration date. Latin and Sanskrit had their heyday but now good translations are a vital part of keeping our favorite books alive. Sometimes they are acceptable, and sometimes they are even better than the originals. For instance, I hear that Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is more famous in English than it is in Persian.

If the writer wrote truthfully, and I think that their universality is part of what makes them a classic in the first place, then any civilization should have words and concepts for whatever the author is trying to express and it is the meaning, not the sound, which is the true message.

[islandclimber]

Yes, I agree with the above... and then the "Divine Comedy" is an epicly long poem, and poetry is much harder to translate as you have so many more factors to deal with, and it is much more unrealistic to make an even slightly literal translation... look what happened to Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" when Nabokov translated almost literally...

but then I have read Neruda in Spanish, and in english translated by donald walsh... and walsh does an amazing job... it has it's own beauty in english....

and then with prose I have heard nothing but good about Pevear and Volokhonsky's translatin of Russian novels...

lastly, the version of The Divine Comedy I have was translated quite well, still left it quite enjoyable, the flow wasn't bad... I really enjoyed it...

i think translations can be good or bad, and also can have their own beauty, that conveys the writers meaning in a new language, inspiring new thoughts and new ideas...

cheers

[Eric Cioe]

I'm doing a lot of research for a term paper on translation theory. There is a lot of latitude that a translator can take, so long as the obvious wrong is avoided. With poetry, there is a trade off - should the translator focus on the rhythmic aspect, or what Schleiermacher calls the "ethical subject matter"? I think that so long as one aspect is not blatantly neglected, the translator has a range of options in front of him.

I don't think that it is necessary that you read a work in the original. Sure, it helps, but life is too short to learn Italian just to read Dante (I speak from experience here). It would be better, I think, to read two translations - one that favors the rhythmic aspect, another that favors the "ethical subject matter."

[Mockingbird_z]

2 Eric Cioe
i liked your "life is too short to learn Italian just to read Dante", i have nothing against it.
What language is, from your piont of view, worth learning to read books in original?

[Eric Cioe]

2 Eric Cioe
i liked your "life is too short to learn Italian just to read Dante", i have nothing against it.
What language is, from your piont of view, worth learning to read books in original?

That depends totally on the person. One of my good friends is learning Norwegian to read Knut Hamsun, because he loves him so much (this is something I may do later). He also plans to learn Polish to read Milosz. But he's one of those people who learn languages easily, and he already knows Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and some German and Norwegian. To him, it's easy.

For me, it isn't. My freshman year of college I took a class called Italian through Dante, where we learned Italian by translating the first few Cantos. By the end of the first 10 weeks, I had had enough of it. Now I'm studying German, mostly with the aim of being able to study German philosophy in the original for graduate school.

It all comes down to what books you prefer. Like I say, I could see myself learning Norwegian at some point because I love Knut Hamsun so much. But I wouldn't recommend that to everyone else, because their taste in books is probably a lot different than mine.