Translation

[Anna_MAlkovych]

kiki1982, To tell the truth, I never heard a person not to speak dialect - they always do. There is a saying for instance to explain where you come from. You just ask people to finish it and you know where they were born and lived. It is: Жадина говядина... If Ukrainian finishes it - соленый огурец, на полу валяется никто его не есть, but depending on what part of Ukraine the end might differ If in St. Petersburg - пустая шоколадна. Moscow - турецкий барабан. And goes like this on and on The meaning is still the same. I remember when I first got to Odessa I thought - no problem people are people everywhere and the language is the same - how wrong I was, I couldn't understand the answers to my questions, they were always answering with questions (almost all Russian do, but their do it in such a manner that it becomes confusing) and there were so many grammar mistakes that actually weren't ones. For example if one asked where he should sit the answer was always: сюдой or тудою - instead of сюда or туда. This is the easiest example - it was easy to get, but the dialect seemed like a big set phrase thing, like a totally different language - close but different, it was no different from my holydays in Byelorussia; it took time to get the flow. And in my city - we have гля - instead of глянь (look), it is only here. My moms friend when wanting to smoke - давай отравимся (lets go take some poison). I am not sure how it is in German and English, but I think it is pretty much the same ( by the way it is funny - I am Russian who tries to learn German ( man, I just hate the amount of verbs and it's articles and the most that habit of making frame sentence construction, I wonder how people can learn Russian - when I think of it, it seems like either born here and get it, or never get it, I can't learn English up to the very end ( and it is said to be easy) and Russian well, I wonder how people learn the difference between our suffixes - I once tried to explain it and couldn't)) Talking about Chekhov the problem is not only with dialect - it is the small town itself, of course they have common things everywhere in the world, but still a lot differs. I so not think that in Germany grannies sit not near but actually on the entrance of the house ( I mean a block of flats) They really sit so you can't just pass and enter, you have to talk with them. And when you do they won't bother to make many movements to let you pass, so you'll have to go by side steps.

[billl]

Yep, just try to imagine Shakespeare in Dutch and it’ll give you an idea of some of the inevitable pitfalls of translated literature.

No need to watch the whole thing, I just want to say that it is at about 2:15 that I just can't buy into the performance anymore...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiRMGYQfXrs

[kiki1982]

kiki1982, To tell the truth, I never heard a person not to speak dialect - they always do. There is a saying for instance to explain where you come from. You just ask people to finish it and you know where they were born and lived. It is: Жадина говядина... If Ukrainian finishes it - соленый огурец, на полу валяется никто его не есть, but depending on what part of Ukraine the end might differ If in St. Petersburg - пустая шоколадна. Moscow - турецкий барабан. And goes like this on and on The meaning is still the same. I remember when I first got to Odessa I thought - no problem people are people everywhere and the language is the same - how wrong I was, I couldn't understand the answers to my questions, they were always answering with questions (almost all Russian do, but their do it in such a manner that it becomes confusing) and there were so many grammar mistakes that actually weren't ones. For example if one asked where he should sit the answer was always: сюдой or тудою - instead of сюда or туда. This is the easiest example - it was easy to get, but the dialect seemed like a big set phrase thing, like a totally different language - close but different, it was no different from my holydays in Byelorussia; it took time to get the flow. And in my city - we have гля - instead of глянь (look), it is only here. My moms friend when wanting to smoke - давай отравимся (lets go take some poison). I am not sure how it is in German and English, but I think it is pretty much the same ( by the way it is funny - I am Russian who tries to learn German ( man, I just hate the amount of verbs and it's articles and the most that habit of making frame sentence construction, I wonder how people can learn Russian - when I think of it, it seems like either born here and get it, or never get it, I can't learn English up to the very end ( and it is said to be easy) and Russian well, I wonder how people learn the difference between our suffixes - I once tried to explain it and couldn't)) Talking about Chekhov the problem is not only with dialect - it is the small town itself, of course they have common things everywhere in the world, but still a lot differs. I so not think that in Germany grannies sit not near but actually on the entrance of the house ( I mean a block of flats) They really sit so you can't just pass and enter, you have to talk with them. And when you do they won't bother to make many movements to let you pass, so you'll have to go by side steps.

Haha, I think that's the same problem as when one learns Arabic. I had a colleague and she did Arabic for six years in one of the best schools for languages in Belgium (university spin-off). She wasn't a bad student, but he went on holiday to Egypt I believe and did not understand a word, but could read signs, newspapers (the main titles) and such things. The thing was that there is something as standad Arabic, but no-one speaks it, so there she went. In the end, she could watch Al-Jazeera, but choose between either reading the subtitles or concentrating very hard on the speech because she could only (again) get the big lines. And that was after 6 years! To put this in a framework: the French course to perfection level was also 6 years and that was indeed almost perfection. You could ask those students anything, they would be able to answer. And I knew one who was Hungarian and who could not speak a word before her first year French. She went to the end and spoke it fluently, as she dd with Dutc too. I think the Arabic course took 10 years, but I wonder what result was obtained. In other languages there is something as a distinction between dialect and standard laguage. The boundary might still be unclear in Italian, although they do write in something that anyone in the country can read, but they speak in their own kind of dialect. That said, Germans have dialect, but most of them are taught and speak Hochdeutsch (standard German), the same for Spanish (Castillano that is the standard for pronunciation and writing) and certainly French which even regulates (like Dutch) what is right and wrong in its Académie Française already since the 17th century (if I am right on that). English is a little bit of an exception because you will hear on the BBC accents even on the news (something unheard of in Dutch, German, French and Spanish among others), but they will never talk about a 'bairn' (small child) or something. You will only hear that out of the mouth of guests on programms, never from the journalist. I believe Oxford English is kind of the standard. .

I am still hopeful about Russian, because there seems to be some stuff that is not present: you don't have to worry in the beginning about your verbs 'to be' and 'to have', they do not exist; verb conjugation is farely easy if you have seen Latin (or French) despite its three conjugations; you just have to learn some cases, which I have learned in German (some are the same, some not, but in the end just accept that it is different) and Latin which is a lot more difficult; Russian words are very much interrelated so it makes it easy when seeing a new one. The only thing which is frustrating is that, in the beginning, you don't have any rope to hold onto. No links with other languages I know. Grammarwise yes (German grammar is a great help), but vocabulary-wise nearly not apart from a few exceptions. Like you are driven mad by the German articles, I have been driven mad by the declension of nouns () and their confusing endings (prepositional female is the same as its plural...). Other than that I have a very thorough Soviet book (if you see what I mean ) that my husband used when he was in university learning Russian (one of the first reading excercises which came before lesson one was 'communist', only two reading lessons later came 'capitalist' ). He speaks very well. I don't now whether he really speaks it as his mother tongue (probably not as he is not able to spend enough time there, but he can have a very long conversation in it). The book explains the issues in a very good linguistic way. If that was not the case, I don't think it would be any good.

I don't get any illusions about speaking Russian one day. I don't have the opportunity to go and spend a few months there to learn it, or to go there on holiday every three months. I'd like to read in it some day and I am confident I can, beause it's going well. I can get the great lines of a conversation now if I pay great attention. So I might get a children's book from the Russian shop soon.

Pushkin pulled me over the line.

[mal4mac]

I'm certainly getting something from Chekhov's English translations as I love his short stories. I've read several volumes of Ronald Hingley's Oxford World Classics translations and the odd story translated by others (like Garnett and Pevear/V), and I have found them all to be excellent. Also I didn't need to read any interpretation or footnotes! At least in Hingley's hands, the stories are transparent and as easy to read as Nick Hornby. Great writers, like D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, have been intensely moved by Garnett's translations. I prefer the atmosphere/essence that comes across in Chekhov translations to the atmosphere/essence found in most original British writings. So, for me, Chekhov translations are certainly a lot better than nothing, they are better than most things! I think the atmosphere and experiences that Chekhov relates are perfectly understandable to a British reader, given a good translation. He writes about universal human emotions and situations, you don't need to be a "small town Russian" to understand him, just a human being.

[Anna_MAlkovych]

kiki1982, you seem determined, in fact I just thought that Ukrainian might me easier for you - there is lots of borrowing from German like Dach, Krawatte and so on, even grammar is closer, but well in Ukrainian there are 7 cases (nightmare, isn't it) - it helps me sometimes to think in Ukrainian and then move to German (and l love that in German you can always see where noun is). I started learning Spanish and it seems way easier. Oh when I was on ICQ had a hard time explaining what is the word недоперепить (that is if I made a word in German (breaking all the rules of word forming) it'd be - nichtbiszuvieltriken - but that is still not a good description, the scary thing that there is also the same thing with eat and together they form so many expressions. Oh, Soviet books are the best, I adore them, those modern ones just cannot compare. I once got a German dictionary (a modern one) and there was See – like sea and lake was of the same gender – after that I hate modern dictionaries, so I found a great older ones 3- from 60s to 80s, one from 90s, and my fav – 1934.

[Anna_MAlkovych]

mal4mac, well I am happy for you, but I so wish you could get how greater it is than translation, I read Witch in English and I just didn't like it, it was so much different

[kiki1982]

Yes, determined, that should be the word. I just think, not trying to insult you naturally, that Russian is a better base for all other languages that can occur. At least to understand. It might be the hardest, but at least you won't be at a loss.

Spanish is amazingly easy, grammarwise. If you know French it is double easy, but there are vocabulary-wise some false friends like they call them in English. Anecdote: my husband (in his early years of Spanish) once told a few friends 'Estoi embarrassado', like the French and English 'I am embarrassed'. What he did not know is that the word in Spanish does exist, but not at all in the male equivalent... It is quite impossible because the word means... 'pregnant'. 'Feo/a' is also a little strange at it means 'ugly', but there is the French/English equivalent 'faux/false' which means bad. It comes from the same root but has moved meanings a little... Other than that, Spanish is dirt easy, which shows in the general Spanish English-student being very bad at grammar... French are very good at it (they get drilled whe they are children) and so are Germans, but Spanish are crap. They don't have any. Slavs are the best at it. Naturraly, they are used to 7 cases or so, so everything like English is just nothing to them. To go more difficult, they should learn Latin or so or maybe somehting like Chinese...

[Anna_MAlkovych]

kiki1982, well Russian is indeed a good base for understanding variety of things I can think of at least 15 ways of saying hand -it is unlike that any other language can give more, but while Infinitive constructions and Gerund is something so widely used in English, in Russian the second one doesn't exist and the first is not used widely. The sounds, we have are really open ones, and most countries do not speak that way, had to think it over. And I think it gives no help with Chinese - that is was ranked the most difficult - wonder why their grammar is not, maybe because they have lots of boring remember by heart work, sometimes I wish I lived since childhood on the border between China and Russia - that way I'd know two most challenging languages, but well I am still kind of lucky – I guess I have the best motherland, but there is a bad side – I also live in one of the worst countries possible.
( on the first course I learned Latin a bit , but well it was just a quicky)

[Annamariah]

The dialect thing applies to Finnish as well. We have a common standard, which is used in written texts, but no one uses that in speech. Everyone speaks their own dialect.

By the way, if you think 7 cases is a nightmare, don't try Finnish, we have 14 or 15 cases (some say that two of them are basically the same case, some say they're two separate cases), and I've heard that in Hungarian there are even more.

As for verbs, just look at this diagram to see how many forms of each verb we have in Finnish Finnish verbs

---

But even though all languages are different, there are ways to translate the general message and feel of the text even when direct translation is impossible. Everything won't be the same, but the goal in translating fiction is usually to make the reader of the translation feel like the original target audience did reading the original. The translator has to remember that what makes people in one culture react in a certain way doesn't necessarily evoke the same reaction in another language. Translation is constant tiptoeing between two languages and cultures.

[Madame X]

By the way, if you think 7 cases is a nightmare, don't try Finnish, we have 14 or 15 cases (some say that two of them are basically the same case, some say they're two separate cases), and I've heard that in Hungarian there are even more.

But most of those cases are simply ‘suffixed’, if you will, -and highly regular, from what I understand- equivalents to all those damnable prepositions that IE languages love so much. And seeing that (aside from idioms/colloquialisms) the correct usage of prepositions is usually one of the most frustrating aspects of foreign language learning, Finnish might actually be a bit of a godsend in that particular respect after all...for anyone weird enough to actually want to study it.

[mal4mac]

I once went to Shakespeare's The Tempest by one of the leading amateur companies in Belgium (pretty good)... Insufferable! I'd much rather struggle and call a few people who know the word I am looking for than read him in Dutch... That said I start to get him better the more older English I read. The same for Chaucer, who is absolutely hilarious! You can just hear Austen in that, and yet they are so many years/centuries apart!

If there are no good translations of Shakespeare into Dutch then there's a great opportunity for someone! Just because one amateur group in Belgium made a hash of it surely doesn't mean that a good translation is not possible. Shakespeare's repution in Germany was made by (reputedly) excellent translations:

http://german.about.com/od/literature/a/Shakespeare.htm

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2866869

[kiki1982]

@Mal4mac:

Those groups all use certified translations, so it is not their performance which is the problem, it was the translation.

All groups are rated and even amateur groups need to ask for permission for more modern pieces to perform them. If their file and production is not good enough, they cease to get anything meaningful, so that they are reduced to performing old pieces without copyright (free to violate and perform badly if they like). This amateur group I am talking about is one of the top in Belgium and is only classed as amateur because the members work for a living and because they desire to keep it small. They have performed a bunch of newer things with great satisfaction, so they are not at all 'amateurs' as meaning 'bad players'.

There is an additional problem with Shakespeare in Dutch, not in German. Lyrical as German may be, 'to be, or not to be, that is the question' still has a nicer rhythm and sound than 'sein oder nicht sein - das ist die Frage'. But not knowing German might be an issue here.

There is an additional problem as I said in Dutch because there is no way to translate 'thou/thee/thy/thine' and get the same feel. Correction, there is, but nobody wants it. Madame X will agree that one could use 'gij/u/uw/uwe', the older versions of 'jij/je (jou)/jouw (je)/jouw (je)' (you) even still declined (which has stopped since before the 50s) and still widely used in Flanders (with the exception of the declension 'uwe') but not so in the Netherlands where it is seen as something old only used in the bible anymore. The thing is, it is older, so it is false and one will never find a contemporary translation of Shakepeare with 'gij'. That should be the case though to get a more Skakespearian feel, but it is not.

One can still use 'I daresay', 'I'll be sworn', 'I'll be bound', and things Hardy and even Brontë or Austen used in modern English. Try that with the Dutch of Couperus (1900s), Elschot (1910s through to 1930s), Gezelle (1830) and Emants (1870s-80s).

Een stonde, ure? The only thing we can use is 'op tijd en stond' which means 'in time' and 'maandstonden' which means '(female monthly) period'. The word 'stonde' used to be a synonym for 'hour', but is no longer.

Just one example to put this problem in perspective:

My husband is an English teacher and shows his adult students of his highest levels Yes Minister which is early 80s through to late. No problem. Sir Humphry, James Hacker and Bernard Woolley speak properly, but do not go over the top. It is not so different from high class people today. Even written language is similar (Hacker's first speech as Prime Minister). In Flanders there was at about the same time a series about the ministery too, called De Collega's (The Colleagues). The spoken Flemish language is much the same as it is now, but the Standard language as spoken by Bonaventuur Verastehove and Mr De Vucht (later in the series) is very much outdated. Both in vocabulary and pronunciation. De Fabeltjeskrant (The Fablenewspaper more or less, a children's programm through to the 80s) is a good example for the Dutch part of the Dutch language: while the speaking language of all characaters if quite ok and uses colloquial Dutch, the main character, Mister Owl reads from a newspaper and occasionally uses older words and expressions too. However, the Dutch have always kept their standard language closer to their mothertongue where the Flemish wanted it totally different (and more Dutch). As a result, modern is the standard and since the fifties and even eighties Dutch has changed so much that it is hopelessly outdated.

Leaving all aside, it is impossible to put an older feel into modern Dutch translation because it is not allowed, and modernisation is imperative. One can never translate Shakespeare properly then, or one should take a translation from a much older poet as Vondel or so, but then one is in danger of using words the public does not understand.

[Anna_MAlkovych]

Annamariah, tar’s crazy, it is a nightmare, now I will never sleep , it will stalk me in my dream, here I thought , that 7 is too much, but 14, people are really miraculous creatures and language is a proof ( looked it through still think that our cases are more complicated, though they are not that numerous)
---
Talking about bad translation, I hate Alice in Wonderland translation in Russian. When I read it in Russian when I was small and then in high school – I felt nothing, and then I read it in English – god, that was so good, so exciting, so crazy, I loved it, I adored it, but what is funny, I watched two cartoon’s of Alice one Disney ( god I want to kill them) and our USSR one and the USSR was good, really Lewis Carol like, just the atmosphere was better somehow, and the song in the cartoon was so nice too ( though there was no song like that in the book).

[kiki1982]

haha 15 cases I'd like to try! But are not some of them the same or something? I always think that cases are an artificial concept thought up by humans to make sense of all those weird changes in a certain position or function to a certain word. The ancient peoples were the first to use them (were the Celts not one of them too?), but they had no clue about them and just did so. Then in an urge to be able to learn Latin and Greek there was someone somewhere who decided about the so-called 'case', it's even got a very telling name in English...

That said, about good Russians films: The Three Musketeers from the 70s is also great. Fans of the Musketeers adore it. It's on YouTube. I find it amazing. Despite its 70s music, it reflects so well the jolly atmosphere of that book and also with music. The French/English films do not really. Music and singing is the main feature. I guess because it is so much part of Russian culture. In fact, apart from the 70s Soviet-film, there has ironically been no interesting film made of that book...
French films are also always good. It is rare that you see a bad French film. Certainly of their classics they are unbeatable.

[mal4mac]

@Mal4mac:

Those groups all use certified translations, so it is not their performance which is the problem, it was the translation.

I recently read parts of (the excellent) "Divine Comedies for the New Millennium: Recent Dante Translations in America and the Netherlands" by Ronald De Rooy, which was a great help in my quest to find a good translation of the Comedy (in modern English!) I wasn't really that interested in the comments on the Dutch translations, but at least gained the impression that there are some good translations out there. There were some comments on Shakespeare translation in Dutch:

"On Kok's Shakespeare translations, see Robert H. Leek, Shakespeare in Nederland, Zutphen, De Walburg Pers, 1988, esp. pp. 78-81, 83-85, 113-14; on p. 81 our translator is called `a very gifted man, who paired a real talent with a superior and for his times very modern insight into Shakespeare's mind and art'"

Is there really much difference between the feel of "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..." and "Shall I compare you to a summer's day"? OK the former is more lyrical, but most of Shakespeare remains intact...

You can't expect *any* translator to produce the lyrical beauty of Shakespeare, but if you can translate most of the meaning, and most formal aspects, then surely that is a good thing. Surely this can be achieved in any language, given a talented translator?

I don't think it would be useful to strain to translate "thee" into the equivalent in old Dutch. One of the advantage of a translation is that the reader gets to read a version in a modern language, making the text transparent to them in the same way that Shakespeare was transparent to the (reasonably educated!) playgoers of his day. I've even seen Shakespeare translated into modern English... though that's going too far!

Has your husband encountered the latest update of Yes Minister - The Thick Of It? If not - Christmas present sorted It's probably a better representation of the *actual* language spoken in political circles since the 1960s, certainly the expletive count is about the same as I have encountered in UK academic circles...

In summary: I usually prefer modernising translations. As I'm forced to read Shakespeare in the original I want the rest of my reading to be as straightforward as possible As one can never produce a perfect translation of Shakespeare, you might as well translate him into a language that everyone can understand. There were some abominable 'archaising' translations of Dante, Goethe, etc, in the Victorian period, that used a lot of thees and thous -- so using old language is not always good...