Three questions
1) What are the most common misconceptions about translation?
2) Why has the English-speaking world’s interest in foreign literature near evaporated? (As a corollary: Has it really, or is it more a result of publishers’ growing focus on sales?)
3) If forced to choose between the two, should one translate words or ideas?
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Comment
- I am not up to answering any of your questions, but there was a two part article in two recent NYRBs by [first name I forget] Appiah about the new translations into English of “In Search of Lost Time”. Appiah has wise and specific things to say about translating Proust’s “words or ideas”.
— matthew Apr 28, 7:16pm # - 1) I wouldn’t know.
2) I’m not sure the interest has waned. Ponder, for example, the robust sales, at least in the U.S., of crime fiction and mysteries by European writers. I would argue that falling interest is really falling availability, and falling availability is a consequence of media conglomerates acquiring publishing houses. To publish a translation of a non-English work of literature is to incur higher overhead, for the translation, on a work unlikely to generate large sales. Thus the return on investment must be derived over a longer time span, and neither chain bookstores nor conglomerate-owned publishing houses will be patient for that long. Mid-list authors and scribblers of literary fiction have suffered because of the same short horizon.
3) I assume you mean translation that seeks the closest correspondence between vocabularies versus translation that sacrifices some measure of that correspondence to better convey meaning. Me, I’ll vote for the latter every time. (If you didn’t mean that, Gail, then I’m screwed.)
— Dale Keiger Apr 28, 7:25pm # - 1) “There’s only one correct translation into language L of any given text”, “translation is a mechanical process”, “translation is just a way of copying meaning from one language to another”, “translation is mediation between languages, and has nothing to do with how language is used”, “translation is not creative”, “translation is not scholarly work”. Lots more, but maybe that’ll do for a start.
3) Depends on the genre. Works which are formally conscious of their language cannot be translated with exclusive concentration on meaning, and works which exclusively focus on meaning with no formal and explicit stylistic consciousness cannot be translated, well, the other way. Stick with ideas for technical manuals, go with words for (most) poetry. But then again. Sigh.
— katatonik Apr 29, 1:13am # - >>Has it really, or is it more a result of publishers’ growing focus on sales?
I would say the latter. Most readers I know, even casual readers, don’t take into account whether a book is translated or not, only whether it is interesting and readable.
— August Apr 29, 2:06am # - 1) The original is ‘better’. WAY better!; and ‘deeper’. Don’t bother. Translators are scholistic lepers who have no experience of life.
2) Focus on sales. The inevitable backwash of the economic global community. (The ‘medium is the massage’, indeed.)
3) Ideas, please. Words are always specific, and compromised. And loaded with meaning. Go for the beauty. Go for the poetic. Go for the rhythm. That’s what we count on you translators for: after all, you’re the experts.
— moj Apr 29, 3:03am # - 1)
‘Anyone who knows at least two languages can be a translator’, rarely defines know sufficient to be true.
Anyone who has reverse computer translated a computer translation knows the falsity of ‘translation software is good enough.’
That people who miss jokes or misconstrue meaning in their native language can blythely say ‘translating is easy’ is truly amusing.
2)
The English-speaking world is increasingly functionally illiterate. Websites that once wrote copy to grade 12 (age 17) are writing down to grade 8 (age 13) as the masses come online.
Literature implies quality and duration which find little appreciation in a disposable quantified world and it requires thought and prior knowledge unknown to a 30-second sound bite existence.
What fate the foreign when native literature is ignored?
Publishing house consolidation has raised the bottom line to a level that literature likely does find difficult to meet.
I detest the shoddy bindings almost as much as the inflated prices as books off copyright are priced with those just written. Pure greed.
3)
One should always translate the words.
The words will likely be translated more accurately than the idea. The words are the idea as the author can best describe. It is folly to expect a translator to understand another’s idea sufficient to write it clearer in either the original or a foreign language.
— Allen Apr 29, 3:28am # - “It is folly to expect a translator to understand another’s idea sufficient to write it clearer in either the original or a foreign language.”
If this is true, then it is folly to translate at all. But it isn’t true. Transparently.
— Joseph Apr 29, 7:31pm # - 1. That what’s there was there all along.
2. Fear.
3. “I was taught the word
pasture as though
it came from the Bible
but I know it named something
with a real sky”
W. S. Merwin
— rollo Apr 29, 11:44pm # - 1. I think there are levels of misconception, aren’t there? The misconceptions held by people who do not speak another language (“I don’t like translated books” being one), the misconceptions held by people who do speak both languages but do not work as translators (a popular one here being, “I could have translated this book better because I observe that this one sentence is flawed”), and the ones held by the translators themselves.
The one I hear the most is the fact that many things do not have a direct translation being an argument against translation. Which is as stupid as “since we cannot understand each other perfectly, perhaps we ought not to speak” although I guess that could also be argued.
2. I don’t know that this is true. I would want to know about volume and availability and genres and everything before I ascribed a lack of interest.
3. I think ideas are more important than words, so I think if a judgement call needs to be made it should be made in favor of translating the idea.
— anne Apr 30, 9:24am # - 3: One is not often forced to choose. Ideas are expressed in words; words that do not evoke ideas have some other function. When faced with a dilemma – the translated words would obscure the original idea, for example – we should compromise as little as possible, to the extent that both words and ideas are fairly represented.
— Simon Apr 30, 10:40am # - I don’t know that this is true. I would want to know about volume and availability and genres and everything before I ascribed a lack of interest.
Anne, it is unfortunately true.
According to UNESCO statistics on the top 50 publishers of literary works in translation, not a single English-speaking country is in the top 10: the United States weighs in at number 13, (officially bilingual) Canada is in 16th spot, and the UK ranks a dismal 26th (Australia doesn’t even make the cut, outstripped by Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Iceland…). German, French and Italian are the top three target languages for works in translation, followed by English and Japanese.
— gail Apr 30, 4:06pm # - 1. That there are cross-language equivalents for words and concepts. That bi-lingualism is qualification enough.
2. ummm… That must be a strictly language accessibility question because under the umbrella of ‘English speaking world’ there is a vast number of cultures that have little in common.
3. The ideas.
— asia May 1, 2:30am # - (1) Translating a text using MT and then reverse translating it and getting rubbish proves that machine translation is useless (you didn’t expect that one, did ya?)
(3) It’s a tightrope act with every single sentence, nay word. If “forced to choose”, I’d say drop the client.
— Nick Somers May 1, 9:07am # - 3. When native speakers of a language who also speak the translated language say, “that’s not what it says,” the translator should be attentive, but should not be cowed. This is particularly true of literary texts—the native speaker of the original language often does not know how to read literary texts even in his/her own language. Ideas.
— Joseph May 1, 1:52pm # - 3) a rebuttal:
The author’s words are the foundation and structure of the idea. It carries not only the idea but it’s history, flavours, and possible permutations. When only the idea is translated it becomes set, a fundamental static entity.
When the words are translated there is a natural check in place – the original words that others may reference for accurracy. When the idea alone is translated this check is lost.
Give me the words and let me find the idea and let me test the reasoning that produced it. Do not just offer me an idea without visible means of support.
With the author’s words comes the idea and it’s proof; with the idea alone we have but faith. I will take the words everytime.
— Allen May 1, 11:47pm # - 1) “What’s so difficult about transltion? You just have to type in Italian what I wrote in English”
— Riccardo Schiaffino May 2, 1:36am # - 3) Before one can meaningfully answer # 3 it is necessary to know what’s the purpose of the translation in question: Is this an instructional manual? Ideas; Advertising copy? Probably ideas; An international treaty? Needs to follow the original text as closely as possible.
— Riccardo Schiaffino May 2, 1:44am # - 1) A computer could do it – it is purely mechanical.
2) Countries like China and India are learning English to help them sell things/services to USA.
3) Some poetic works are supposedly better translated. Ideas.
My cousin translates technical documents from German-translated-into-English to English-as-understood-by-English-speaking-people. Ideas.
Some foreign words are adopted by English, if they provide a succinct or less overused embodiment (of an idea).
— bobby May 2, 12:52pm # - 1. Absolute correspondence. Absolute lack of correspondence. That translation is a separate thing from literary production, when it has been intertwined with it forever.
2. I’m not sure. The economics of film adaptations may have had an impact, but the market for non-bestsellers in translation seems small but constant. How’s Harvill doing, now that I find out it’s under Random House?
3. Yes. (Less facetiously: the words. Writing is made of words, my dear Degas.)
— nick s May 3, 5:08am # - 1. A misconception I formerly had about translation—I don’t know how common—was that by reading two or three translations of a given text I could somehow triangulate thereby the essence of the original.
2. I hope not; but I don’t know. Dale probably has it right. For as long as I’ve been reading literature in English translation, I’ve been at least dimly aware that I was indulging in a minority interest, out of the commercial mainstream.
3. One should take each case on its own merits, and apply one’s experience, tact and judgement as best one can. As a reader, I have often been grateful for a page of prose on which a hundred such difficult decisions and painful compromises may have been made, all but invisibly, for my benefit.
— misteraitch May 3, 10:47am # - A common misconception among customers is that translations can be done both very fast and for very little money.
— Fritz Plissken May 4, 8:25pm # - 1) All you need is a dictionary. A book, the deal for which was signed two years ago, can be sent to the translator as close to the publishing deadline as possible.
2) I do not know.
3) I nearly always go for the idea. When it comes to poetry, however, you are pretty much screwed. Of course, I am mostly subtitling, so sticking to words amounts to translation suicide.
On a side note, subtitlers who do their jobs well and translate ideas often get criticised for using words that are different from the original text. I once had to explain to someone that “it is raining cats and dogs” could not be translated literally into Dutch. “Yes”, this person said, “but that is what they are saying!”
The trouble was that phrase was used in a cartoon for a scene in which cats and dogs literally came falling from the sky… I found a great solution to translate the idea and the pun, but it was shot down instantly by this viewer because I did not stick to the words.
This anecdote shows how unrewarding translating for tv/cinema can be. The public can hear the original and read the translation simultaneously and compare the two.
— Guy May 8, 12:29pm # - “It is folly to expect a translator to understand another’s idea sufficient to write it clearer in either the original or a foreign language.”
For technical stuff, maybe, but how about puns for instance?
If I had translated the cats and dogs quote I mentioned in my previous post literally, just the words, the whole joke would have evaporated.
“It is raining cats and dogs” is a typical English expression that has no literal pendant in any other language I know of. The basic meaning, that it is raining heavily, would be lost on the target audience if you just translate the words.
My solution to this particular translation problem was: “Het is honden- én kattenweer”. “Het is een hondenweer” means “it is raining heavily”. “Weer” is “weather”.
By extending this Dutch expression (with ”én” or an emphasised “and” to include cats (“katten”) I conveyed both the meaning and the pun. The audience, children in this case, were then able to appreciate both the language and the corresponding image.
Fortunately for me the Dutch language had an expression with at least one of the two components of the original expression, namely the dogs, but in other languages that may not be the case… with all the dire consequences for a translator of those languages.
Come to think of it, literal translations won’t work in certain legal texts either because the same words may have totally different meanings in different judicial systems. Besides, translators do not always work for people who are able, or even willing, to check the original text.
— Guy May 8, 12:49pm #
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