Some are more equal than others
The fact that ‘’love’’ and ‘’un amour’’ are not an exact translation of each other has caused more confusion between the English and the French than most of the wars of politics and religion.
– Sonia Brownell
To avoid going round the bend, something that translators need to avoid thinking about is the arguable truth that there are no absolute equivalents between languages.
If and when they do think about it, a sense of doom and futility is inevitable; the ghost of Walter Benjamin rising to shout: I told you so.
Take a simple example like the word like bread. When translating it into German you’d put Brot, pain when carrying it over to French, klyeb in Russian, and so on. But, as anyone who’s been to few delis and bakeries knows, a loaf of German bread doesn’t look or taste anything like a loaf of French bread, or Irish bread, or Wonder Bread or…
So how do you write the word bread, and expect it to evoke the taste and texture of a foreign loaf?
The same conundrum is embedded in so many seemingly innocuous words – house, tree, mongrel, lake (when Europeans see the lakes of North America, they’re certain you’re pulling their leg. No way. I know an ocean when I see one), truck, noodles… – each one calling up a very different mental picture from what the author probably had in mind.
Then, of course, there are those words that sound so lovely in some languages, and so nasty in others. Like the word vignoble in French – with the word noble right in it, along with connotations of wild and prim, rolling sunlit hillsides, reactionary peasants, fruity French guys with great schnozes buried deep in their glass, the tradition of centuries… Then, in English, you’ve got winery, which sounds like wino + factory, cement and plastic, and the smell of a booze-soaked carpet.
It’s best not to think about it.
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Comment
- As a translator starting out (and you think European languages to English is hard, try taking an East Asian language to English!), this made my day. :)
— John B Apr 20, 1:49am # - Your epigraph has piqued my interest. Could you explain the differences between the words “love” and “un amour”?
— ali Apr 20, 5:37am # - My Swedish friends rarely use the word “love” – at least not in the context Americans throw it around. It bugged Ylva if I expressed that I “loved” her sweater. She would look at me funny…and then want to give me her sweater if I felt so strongly about it.
— barbara Apr 20, 2:40pm # - Could you explain the differences between the words “love” and “un amour”?
Oy, how much time have you got?
— gail Apr 20, 3:13pm # - Well, considering I’m an unemployed grad student — plenty.
— ali Apr 22, 4:37pm # - I’d suggest using ‘vineyard’ as a translation for vignoble(s); winery is more ‘chai’ .
I’d love to have your suggestions for the French word ‘terroir’, how do you cover soil + region + local + consistent + authentic in one English term?
— lyndsey Apr 25, 2:40pm # - how do you cover soil + region + local + consistent + authentic in one English term?
I think that’s why everybody just uses the word ‘terroir,’ even though it sounds so awfully pretentious.
— gail Apr 25, 3:44pm # - I just ran across an extremely apposite quote in Jane Stevenson’s The Winter Queen (p. 136):
“These Dutch words which I have just uttered signify very little, but it is no better if I use the words of Oyo, because if I say aremo, you hear ‘prins’, I say afin, you hear ‘paleis’. Yet all these things are the same and not the same. I know my great ignorance, as a stranger and a sojourner in this country. I am reminded every hour of all that I do not understand.”
— language hat Apr 26, 5:25pm # - So how do you write the word bread, and expect it to evoke the taste and texture of a foreign loaf?
This one sentence basically summed up my entire MA thesis. Damn.
— mara b Apr 28, 12:32pm # - “So how do you write the word bread, and expect it to evoke the taste and texture of a foreign loaf?”
The Flemish have found a solution. A baguette is referred to as a “Frans broord” or “French bread”. In Dutch it is “stokbrood” or, literally, “stick bread” :-)
Descriptive translations like that sometimes work. But, then again, you’d still have to be familiar with the original concept.
— Guy May 8, 12:59pm # - In regards to the Bread Question…
Words tend to specialize when crossing to new languages. A few examples:
– “Kielbasa” is Polish for sausage in general, but English for a very specific type of sausage.
– “Kanata”, in the original Huron/Iroquois, simply meant “village” or “settlement.”
It’s easy to see how this happens—when questioned by people who don’t speak our language, we provide general answers at first, and only get specific when pressed.
“What do you call this?”
“It’s a sausage, fer chrissakes”
“Where are we?”
“It’s my town.”
— Alex May 10, 9:15pm #
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