Works impossible to translate?

[bobb328]

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?

[JBI]

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).

[E.A Rumfield]

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.

[cafolini]

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

[JBI]

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.

[cacian]

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.

[Corona]

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.

[PeterL]

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.

[Corona]

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!

[JCamilo]

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.

[PeterL]

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.

[Corona]

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?

[Calidore]

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

[JCamilo]

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.

[cafolini]

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.

[JBI]

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.
Spoken like a true prose reader.

Seriously, if anybody thinks the poetic arts are mere "idiomatic expression" one is deranged. It's not just usage, idiom, and fidelity. It is art. Art is never that simple. What we basically do and see in translation of poetic works is an impression of the true art - meaning, a vague sketch. We rarely get passed the surface. Some people can be moved by the sketch, but it is still a sketch. An approximation.

[bobb328]

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.


I should clarify, what I mean was works being translated INTO English. I only know English and German. I learned German in High School, and for example, Goethe is completely worth learning German for if you like him and have the time. There's nothing like him in English, maybe Keats as far as the sound of words, but obviously a very different writer. I was wondering if anyone who's main language ISN'T English could comment on someone like Flaubert, who spent a week writing a page or less.

[mona amon]

Translation is a reinterpretation, just as making a book into a movie is a reinterpretation, so I'm thinking some translations can be as artistically good as the original, some may be worse, and some may even be better. But it can never be the same thing.

My candidate for untranslatable is the Thirukural. I've heard it is one of the most translated non-religious texts ever, but the unique charm of the original lies in the way the poet has chosen as few words as possible to convey a profound meaning. Only the words chosen by the poet can ever be the right words. Change the words and there is no longer the word play, alliteration, rythym, and above all its terse, fleeting quality. In other words, the meaning can be retained, but the poetry is lost, and this must be true of most poetical works.

EDIT:
It's not just usage, idiom, and fidelity. It is art. Art is never that simple. What we basically do and see in translation of poetic works is an impression of the true art - meaning, a vague sketch. We rarely get passed the surface. Some people can be moved by the sketch, but it is still a sketch. An approximation. - JBI

Well said.

[kiki1982]

I would say that Cyrano de Bergerac is untranslatable. Some people have tried and failed miserably. It is so beautifully French and poetic (it's a cliché, I know :rolleyes:, but it is a fact), it also plays with some French pastoral lit that hasn't been translated (for obvious reasons) so, even picking tose hints up would be useless for English readers.
Probably it is very hard, if not well-nigh impossible to translate poetry properly, as it is a mix of culture, reference, idiom and shape.

Translation is an art, but it is an art not to get carried away with your own interpretation. Some translators put too much of their on interpretation in, so that some of the novel is obscured (at best) or totally lost. A few Kafka translations have been butchered like that.

Dutch lyrical writer Marcellus Emants has also been somewhat mistreated by Coetzee. The parts of the translation I have read in English are just not grinding enough and the style is not really modern enough to be Emants. Although the Dutch is dated (from the 1920s in A Posthumous Confession, which is the only novel translated from him; to me already the title is a mistake, as it leaves out one of its major facets which is the fact that the character cared to leave it till later, but in hindsight shouldn't have), Emants was a man who believed in modernisation and he wished to read a novel and not to notice the words. His writing style dramatically changed over the years, more than any writer I have read. Most people get stuck. He didn't. He had the same strategy as Zola (who was a friend of his) in exposing the human psyhe. The grinding inadequacy of a man simply telling the reader he felt like killing his wife and he enjoyed it is not really there in th translation. The kind of smug 'yes, and?' was't there.
I think I might make some work of that one day, if they leave me the time. ;)

[OrphanPip]

Spoken like a true prose reader.

Seriously, if anybody thinks the poetic arts are mere "idiomatic expression" one is deranged. It's not just usage, idiom, and fidelity. It is art. Art is never that simple. What we basically do and see in translation of poetic works is an impression of the true art - meaning, a vague sketch. We rarely get passed the surface. Some people can be moved by the sketch, but it is still a sketch. An approximation.

Whether or not the final product is an approximation depends, I think, on the goals of the translator. Mona is right to an extent that translation is a form of adaptation, in that the translator can't help but interpret the text through the act of translation. Approximation is one possible goal of translation, but you might take something like Pound's translation of "The Seafarer" and then the goal isn't really to approximate the meaning of the original, but to sublimate what Pound saw as the pure "Englishness" of the Anglo-Saxon poem. So, I think we might have to admit the possibility that a translation is more than just a sketch, or some other lesser mimetic form, but can also work the other way and become a different, and potentially greater, piece of art than the original.

Edit: Although, I've just completed a translation of The Dream of the Rood, and I do think it is nothing more than a poor sketch of the original.

[JBI]

Whether or not the final product is an approximation depends, I think, on the goals of the translator. Mona is right to an extent that translation is a form of adaptation, in that the translator can't help but interpret the text through the act of translation. Approximation is one possible goal of translation, but you might take something like Pound's translation of "The Seafarer" and then the goal isn't really to approximate the meaning of the original, but to sublimate what Pound saw as the pure "Englishness" of the Anglo-Saxon poem. So, I think we might have to admit the possibility that a translation is more than just a sketch, or some other lesser mimetic form, but can also work the other way and become a different, and potentially greater, piece of art than the original.

Edit: Although, I've just completed a translation of The Dream of the Rood, and I do think it is nothing more than a poor sketch of the original.

Pound's poem and the original are not the same poem. he basically wrote his own poem inspired by the former. The same can be said of his translations from Chinese.

[OrphanPip]

Pound's poem and the original are not the same poem. he basically wrote his own poem inspired by the former. The same can be said of his translations from Chinese.

To an extent sure, he removes the homiletic message from the end of "The Seafarer" which totally changes the meaning, and he imposes an entirely secular reading of the poem which is certainly not historical. However, it's not entirely a re-write, it is still possible to take Pound's poem and trace where he got each line from, his editorial choices strongly shape the meaning, and he does make some questionable translations (probably deliberately), but it's still a form of translation.

[JBI]

To an extent sure, he removes the homiletic message from the end of "The Seafarer" which totally changes the meaning, and he imposes an entirely secular reading of the poem which is certainly not historical. However, it's not entirely a re-write, it is still possible to take Pound's poem and trace where he got each line from, his editorial choices strongly shape the meaning, and he does make some questionable translations (probably deliberately), but it's still a form of translation.

You can also trace They Flee From Me to Petrarch, but Wyatt's poem is not the same. It is a new creation, despite it being generally a translation from Petrarch.

[kiki1982]

But making a different thing inspired by is not the role of a translator. If I watch a film, say Pride and Prejudice, I expect it to be resembling the original, not that Darcy runs off with Lydia or Lizzie accepting Darcy straight away because he's got 10,000 a year. That changes the meaning.
Similarly, you cannot then call any of these things that vastly change the meaning of a work 'translations', but rather 'adaptations' or 'interpretations'. I agree that there are sometimes things you cannot get around, but in most cases, certainly in prose, translators are all too happy to change a word because they find it sounds better. Never mind what they extent of that change is.

[Goodman Brown]

Well as far as difficulty in translation Dantes Inferno has to be up there! translating from Italian in trecet form to English and using that same trecet style had to have been difficult for the many translators that have attempted the task!!

[jayat]

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?

I'm not answering but adding a new case...Jorge Luis Borges must be a hard work to translate. I infer it from his writings. Sintactically, difficult;lexically, rich, and what refers the expression field, very deep inside from the (argentinian?) Spanish. IF anybody cul tell me....I'm curious about that. Thanks 'ad infinitum'.

[ashulman]

I would have said Finnegan's Wake until I read that article about the Chinese digging it.

[cafolini]

But making a different thing inspired by is not the role of a translator. If I watch a film, say Pride and Prejudice, I expect it to be resembling the original, not that Darcy runs off with Lydia or Lizzie accepting Darcy straight away because he's got 10,000 a year. That changes the meaning.
Similarly, you cannot then call any of these things that vastly change the meaning of a work 'translations', but rather 'adaptations' or 'interpretations'. I agree that there are sometimes things you cannot get around, but in most cases, certainly in prose, translators are all too happy to change a word because they find it sounds better. Never mind what they extent of that change is.

Correct. Translations are never impossible, but to a large extent they are all adaptations. Obviously, languages are idiomatic, which makes then coincidental conveyor belts of interpretations. The great art of translation is an art of adaptation to what may or may not be available. There exists not a word in-itself; not to speak of a complete work.

[PeterL]

I would have said Finnegan's Wake until I read that article about the Chinese digging it.

I was just thinking the same thing. I wonder what the translation is like. A significant part of Finnegans Wake relates to the sound of the language, and that simply would not, could not, be translatable. I'll have to find a Chinese reader and ask.

[cafolini]

I was just thinking the same thing. I wonder what the translation is like. A significant part of Finnegans Wake relates to the sound of the language, and that simply would not, could not, be translatable. I'll have to find a Chinese reader and ask.

China is udergoing a social revolution similar to the one Joyce announced in 1922. Hong Kong was not a Christmas present on the part of the West, but a training ground for capitalism and financial works. Inside China, behind the scenes, Microsoft, Dell and Intel rule the world. It is not surprising then that Joyce is one parameter.

[Nick Capozzoli]

If it were always alwayspossible to make a one-to-one translation of statements in one language to another, then there would not be a problem. Some statements are easily translatable...say "Arma virumque cano" to "I sing [of/about] arms and [a/the/or no article] man." But then the translator from Latin to English has to deal with word order..."I sing of arms and the man"..."Arms and a man I sing" ...etc. Then there is the matter of the sound of the original, the connotations (as opposed to denotations of the words), etc. Professor Booth (UC Berkeley) has written a lot about these issues in Shakespeare, but his criticism is applicable to poetic translation in general.

Consider a quotation from Hamlet: "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." Hiow would you translate that to, say modern Italian or German? You could just translate it literally. The first part of the statement (I am but mad north-north-west) is easily translated. The second part (when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw) could be translated literally as well, but it gets more complex, because there are more interpretive options (connotations) and language-specific assonances (hawk/handsaw) that might be difficult to render in another language.

In this specific case there is ambiguity as to the meanings of "hawk" and "handsaw." A hawk can be a bird or prey or a plasterer's tool. A "handsaw" is a carpenter's tool, but folks have opined that it could be a mispelling of another bird (a sort of heron). The problem for translators is that English allows for both possibilities, and there is no way for translators of Hamlet to express in their non-English languages exactly what Shakespeare expressed in Hamlet.

[kiki1982]

To say nothing of the rhythm. As I said the job of translating poetry is an ungrateful one.

I agree with you. :)

[hannah_arendt]

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?

When it comes to polish literature, it is very difficult to translate Henryk Sienkiewicz and Adam Mickiewicz because of many regional expressions.