The merits of translation

[Robert007]

I was wondering as to the merits of reading the translation versus the original, primarily on the degrees of difference between both experiences. For instance, I know that the dactylic pentameter so widespread in Greek poetry is difficult to reproduce in English. I would garner that the specific language in question makes a difference; Chinese is farther from English than French, so is it easier to produce high quality english translations of french rather than Chinese works. Furthermore, different languages have different words for different things (the Chinese word for goat, sheep and ram is one and the same). This inquiry is motivated by a consideration I had of whether to put off reading don quixote for four years, by which time I would have garnered enough knowledge of spanish to read the work in its original language (making it the first non-English novel I have read). I was of a fancy of reading the novel right now in its English translation, but I now have decided to wait and research upon the matter to determine how different the translation is from the original.

[Dreamwoven]

The problems will vary from language to language. Mechanical translations like google translate are very poor. For reading books in the original its OK to use a dictionary, so Spanish read like that would be quite good I reckon. Of course, the weaker the reader is in the language, the more often the dictionary will have to be used, making it very laborious.

[Pompey Bum]

I was wondering as to the merits of reading the translation versus the original, primarily on the degrees of difference between both experiences.

My opinion is that reading in an original language is an order of magnitude (at least) better than using even a good translation. An analogy I've used before is that reading a translation is like listening to a baseball game on the radio, while reading in the original language is like actually being at the game. But world literature is immense and you can't learn all the languages, so it often ends up that you use a translation. We English speakers are lucky to have several amazing literatures written in our language, so we have to take consolation in that. And, hey, games on the radio are good, too.

That's for prose. With most poetry, in my opinion, you're just out of luck if you don't speak (or at least read) the lingo. The exceptions are epic poetry (Homer, Virgil, Dante, etc.), but only if you have an outstanding translator, preferably another poet; and possibly certain East Asian forms that coincide with modern minimalism (but not really).

But if you are a Middle School student, you should definitely take the time to pick up a language or three. You seem to be interested in the ancient western classics. You will not be able to seriously study them in college without Greek and Latin (you can take those as you study, but it helps a lot if you already have one going in). And modern languages are marketable skills that help you make over-seas friends, get jobs, and--meet girls!

For instance, I know that the dactylic pentameter so widespread in Greek poetry is difficult to reproduce in English.

Well, the epic poets wrote in dactyls, but they're not hard to use in English. It's just oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah, or if you like, boom-chucka, boom-chucka. Do that six times and you sound like Homer!-- or John Philip Souza, for that matter, who used to like dactylic hexameter, too, presumably because he wanted to connect the ideals of the new American republic with the virtues of Ancient Greece and Rome. Stars and Stripes forever, for example, is written in the same meter as The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Aeneid.

But ancient lyricists like Sappho and Catullus didn't have much use for dactyls. They were too martial (not to say militaristic for the short and personal poems they wrote. If you try to use dactyls for that, it sounds comical (boom-chucka, boom-chucka). Personally I love writing comic poems in double dactyls:

Higgeldy Piggeldy
General Washington
Crossing the Delaware,
Still as the Styx,
Wrought sudden death upon
Sundry Germanic folk,
Just like ol' Bill did in 1066.

That's not Homer exactly, but it's not particularly hard to do.

This inquiry is motivated by a consideration I had of whether to put off reading don quixote for four years, by which time I would have garnered enough knowledge of spanish to read the work in its original language (making it the first non-English novel I have read). I was of a fancy of reading the novel right now in its English translation, but I now have decided to wait and research upon the matter to determine how different the translation is from the original.

No, read it in translation for now, and save the original for college. Cervantes wrote in the 16th/17th century, so his Spanish is likely to be too challenging for a casual read, even after four years of study. Or maybe I'm wrong. Spanish is a simpler language than some. Perhaps one of the LitNet Spanish mavens can offer an opinion. Also, are you used to reading long books like that? Wanting to read Cervantes is really admirable, but there are lots of other "literary" books you could be enjoying for now. What you end up reading, of course, is a personal decision that only you can make. Happy reading in any case! I enjoyed your post.

[Ecurb]

My opinion is that reading in an original language is an order of magnitude (at least) better than using even a good translation..... .

It seems to me that this is a form of "intentionalism" -- in other words, a worship of the artist over the art. No doubt we would best understand the original "intent" of the writer by reading in the original language. But does that make our experience "better"? Is reading "The DaVinci Code" in English a "better" experience than reading "War and Peace" in English?


The scholar who wants to study Tolstoy should learn Russian. For the rest of us, who merely want to enjoy our reading, or find it enlightening, we must muddle through the best we can. We're better off reading "War and Peace" than reading 99% of the novels written in English because the English translations of War and Peace are better novels than 99% of those written in English. Whether they are as "good" as the original Russian is a question I am not equipped to answer.

Poetry is more difficult -- but think of some of Ezra Pound's Chinese "translations". They are very good poems, well worth reading, whether or not they are "good translations". Apparently (I'm no expert) those adept at Chinese think Pound did not translate accurately, but somehow was able to translate the mood and poetic feeling of the originals. Here's "The River Merchant's Wife", which Pound calls "after Li Po", rather than a translation.

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
By Ezra Pound

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed
You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.
I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Chō-fū-Sa.

Source: Selected Poems (1957)

[Robert007]

Thanks for your insights Pompey Bum and Ecurb. I am thinking of taking online courses on latin and greek. As for Don Quixote, I believe that the English translation suffices for the purposes of enjoyment. Considering the length, as Pompey Bum pointed out, I will start reading the story in the summer, when I have more time! Again, thanks for the insight.

[Pompey Bum]

That sounds like a great idea, Robert. Let us know what you make of "the Don."

It seems to me that this is a form of "intentionalism" -- in other words, a worship of the artist over the art. No doubt we would best understand the original "intent" of the writer by reading in the original language. But does that make our experience "better"? Is reading "The DaVinci Code" in English a "better" experience than reading "War and

It would be a more authentic kind of input--hence my metaphor of the ballgame. But that's got nothing to do with worshipping artist or art.

[Lykren]

The interesting thing, to me, is that Pevear and Volokhonsky (for example) are not, by themselves, great novelists; but their Anna Karenina is certainly a remarkable experience! Thus, something must carry over in translation. That's one route to take.

But when you're translating between very different languages, like Chinese and English, and what you're translating is poetry, which of course is focused on conveying itself by means of an explicitly linguistic intensity, then my feeling is that you have to be something of a great poet, as Pound was, in order to do something with the material. Which Pound did.

[Pompey Bum]

The interesting thing, to me, is that Pevear and Volokhonsky (for example) are not, by themselves, great novelists; but their Anna Karenina is certainly a remarkable experience! Thus, something must carry over in translation.

Assuredly there is. I have been reading an English translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives that I found at Gutenberg. I didn't check the translator; they are usually Victorians who use a comfy educated style, similar to the way Plutarch, an aristocratic intellectual, actually wrote. I translated quite a bit of Plutarch back in the day, and found him borderline pompous (the aristocratic side), but also warm, charming, and delightful. As I've been reading the translation (it's thousands of pages long and I've only read the first 500 pages or so), I have found myself enthralled at the beauty of the English and the vivid sense one gets of Plutarch himself. I've actually given it the highest compliment I can give a work: I've taken to reading it out loud for the sheer joy of the sound. After a few hundred pages (dawn breaking on Marblehead, as they say in Masssachusetts), I decided to see who the translator was--maybe he'd done other good things, too. It was Dryden. Yes, that Dryden: John Dryden, Poet Laureate of 1668, during a period of the Restoration that is sometimes called the Age of Dryden. The translation, unabridged, had since been modernized (to Middle Victorian English) but otherwise left intact. The brilliance of both minds still shines through.

But reading Plutarch in Greek was more authentic. I could hear his own pompous and charming voice over the millennia. With Dryden, what I heard was Dryden doing his best Plutarch--and succeeding gloriously. Personally, I think the question of whether a translation gives one the same experience as the original is silly: of course it doesn't. The real question for me is: is one even reading the same book? And to that I say--well, yes. Sort of.

It goes back to a question that Clopin and I were discussing last week. As it happens, Plutarch himself was the inspiration. At one point in Parallel Lives, he says that for centuries the Athenians preserved Theseus' ship as a kind of relic. When one piece would rot away, they would simply replace it with a new piece. Eventually every bit of the original ship had been replaced; something, he says, that excited debate in the philosophical schools about whether it was the same boat. Isn't that the real issue here? Not which is the "better" reading experience or whether there are other valid reading experiences.

I say yes, same book, same boat, although I would think most moderns/materialists would disagree with me, especially about the boat. (YesNo being an exception, since he holds that there is no material existence independent of the mind). For me, it is the same book, but it is a different voice--sometimes subtly, sometimes grossly--and that makes it a different experience. Reading in the original language is certainly the more authentic experience. Some translations (like Dryden's Plutarch) may approach authenticity; others (like Ezra Pounds Chinese fudging) may possess other virtues besides authenticity; and of course, some may just suck. So I guess that's a long way of agreeing with you, Lykren: I find it interesting, too..

[Lykren]

Yeah. Translation really does open up all sorts of interesting philosophical questions about the possible relationship between language and reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...hy#Art_objects

[Ecurb]

Eventually every bit of the original ship had been replaced; something, he says, that excited debate in the philosophical schools about whether it was the same boat. Isn't that the real issue here? Not which is the "better" reading experience or whether there are other valid reading experiences.

I say yes, same book, same boat, although I would think most moderns/materialists would disagree with me, especially about the boat. (YesNo being an exception, since he holds that there is no material existence independent of the mind). For me, it is the same book, but it is a different voice--sometimes subtly, sometimes grossly--and that makes it a different experience. Reading in the original language is certainly the more authentic experience. Some translations (like Dryden's Plutarch) may approach authenticity; others (like Ezra Pounds Chinese fudging) may possess other virtues besides authenticity; and of course, some may just suck. So I guess that's a long way of agreeing with you, Lykren: I find it interesting, too..

Is "authentic" derived from the same root as "author"? If it is, of course reading the original in more "authentic" or "authoritative" in that it is closer to the original. Is it necessarily "better", though?

I understand what you mean about the charm of hearing Plutarch's "voice". Nonetheless, if we posit a hypothetical Russian Hallmark Cards writer, mightn't translations into English by Emily Dickinson be "better" literature than the originals?

I mentioned scholars because they are interested in "authenticity". So are the rest of us -- but not so much. We just want something that's fun to read (hearing Plutarch's "voice", handed down through the millenia, can, of course, make reading him more fun). On the other hand, I've seen original cave paintings from 20,000 years ago, and the experience far transcended seeing reproductions because I felt a communion with ancient humans (and because the caves were great in and of themselves).

Think of a movie that has been remade. Occasionally (not often, I'll grant) the remake (i.e. translation) is "better" than the original. My only point is that we can't assume the original is automatically superior (unless we want a more "authentic" communion with the author, in which case we can).

[Clopin]

Are the Pound translations actually good translations or just good poems in themselves? Did Pound even read Chinese well enough to do the translating?

[Clopin]

Is "authentic" derived from the same root as "author"? If it is, of course reading the original in more "authentic" or "authoritative" in that it is closer to the original. Is it necessarily "better", though?

I understand what you mean about the charm of hearing Plutarch's "voice". Nonetheless, if we posit a hypothetical Russian Hallmark Cards writer, mightn't translations into English by Emily Dickinson be "better" literature than the originals?

Well it's better in that it's what the author actually wrote and probably "better" writing in general. Great literature doesn't just happen, words are chosen by very good, sometimes genius, writers. Assuming that translators are likely to do a better job choosing words, and the order of words, and conveying emotion with words than Dickinson or Tolstoy or Hugo, etc are doesn't seem like a safe bet (not that it's impossible).

[Lykren]

Are the Pound translations actually good translations or just good poems in themselves? Did Pound even read Chinese well enough to do the translating?

Well your first question isn't an either/or proposition is it? As for the second, I think he constantly referred to a dictionary (which must have been really slow - you have to look up Chinese characters by radical and thumb through hundreds of them).

This page demonstrates how differently Chinese poetry can work than English poetry, syntactically speaking. Look at the page that gives a word-for-word translation. There are no explicit tenses, plurals, or speakers.

[Ecurb]

To the extent that the original is written in elegant, descriptive prose, it is less likely that the translation will be as "good". Most great writers write elegant prose -- but not all of them do (think of Paul Fussell's excoriation of Graham Greene's prose). Some may have a talent for plot, or characterization, but not for elegant writing.

The original IS "what the author actually wrote" -- which makes it better if we see literature as a way of communing with authors (which is what I was getting at in my first post in this thread), or if we want to talk "authoritatively" about the novel (as scholars do). Clopin and I actually agree (my point being that it's not impossible for a translation to be as "good" as or better than the original, although it is unlikely).

Maybe it's just me, but I think the Humphrey Bogart "Maltese Falcon" is a better movie than the 1931 original (although maybe that's not a good example because both are "translations of Dash Hammett's novel).

[Ecurb]

Are the Pound translations actually good translations or just good poems in themselves? Did Pound even read Chinese well enough to do the translating?

From what little I know about it, Pound didn't read Chinese very well. The story I heard is that he was approached by the widow of a Orientalist scholar, and worked from his translations and from Japanese translations. I still think it's appropriate for Pound to credit the original poets -- although we will never know if they would have approved.