The problem with translation.....

I can't say about this book since I don't know French but I saw this happen with others books. My language is Portugues and sometimes when I read translated books they just don't hold the feelings, and when I read in English is very different. This don't happen when is another writer translating, they keep the flow and poetic of the novel.

mirandashell said:

It looked really interesting. It's a crime novel set in Medievel Albania. And it won a Booker.

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I have a short stack of Booker Prize novels with bookmarks somewhere in Chapter One. It's one of those prizes that the literary establishment gives to one another for being obscure and giving an ordinary reader an inferiority complex.

Have you seen that old article by Myers
[FONT=&quot]"An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose"
[FONT=&quot]http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers[/FONT][/FONT]

mirandashell said:

This is the translator from French to English: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/193869.Jon_Rothschild

And from Albanian to French: http://www.albanianhistory.net/texts21/AH1998.html

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Most everything, including novels, are translated to French first, and then to other languages. French is sort of like this bridge in the world of languages, and an Albanian -> French -> English translation is cheaper than an Albanian-> French + an Albanian -> English translation.

I've always said this- once something is translated, it loses some of its soul. Especially with novels, where everything relies on prose. Films don't really have this problem as they rely on dialogue, which is far easier to translate. Put simply, translating anything artistic is difficult. Not only is it impossible to translate some phrases, but you also have this added variable of the translator. When you translate something, you can adopt various styles of translation, such as a literal translation, or attempt to capture the beauty of the language. If the latter approach is used then you're limited to the ability of the translator. At the same time, it's sort of frowned upon to take any artistic liberty with the prose, because your goal is to conserve the original text, so you often end up with a dry, boring literal translation.

For a good translation you need a good translator AND a decent writer all rolled into one. If the translator is technically perfect but a lousy writer you can end up with a flat, literal translation which is a shadow of the original. And if they're a great writer but a lousy translator you can end up with an entirely different book! (Horror stories include new characters, plot changes, tacked-on chapters ... eek.)

Of course, translation also costs a lot of money so there's a temptation to skimp on costs by rushing it out the door.

I am a polyglot, and I can tell you for a certainty, there is a definite difference in the way things are translated, person to person. While something may be grammatically correct, it may not convey the same feeling. While something may be semantically the same, it may not convey the true meaning.

I think this came to light more than ever while I was an exchange student in Croatia. I worked some with a guy who subtitled American sitcoms and soap operas in Croatian. His grasp of English was excellent. His vocabulary was extensive. And yet he consistently missed the point translating American slang in its true meaning to Croatian. The words were there, but the oomph behind them wasn't.

I suspect something similar happened here.

If you read different translations of the Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the difference between versions can be night and day. I've learned to look for the better ones, because some are as dry as dust, whereas the best translations of his work will take your breath away for sheer beautiful.

So yes, it can definitely be a problem.

I think there's definitely a "feel" to books which have been translated from the same language. I've read a couple of French books (although no Albanian ones that I can recall) and they are ... odd. There *was* a flatness to the language.

Daniel Glattaneur's Love Virtually is written as an email exchange between two people and in the version I read, each character was given their own translator. It's very well written (or at least, translated).

dangerousbill said:

I have a short stack of Booker Prize novels with bookmarks somewhere in Chapter One. It's one of those prizes that the literary establishment gives to one another for being obscure and giving an ordinary reader an inferiority complex.

Have you seen that old article by Myers
[FONT=&quot]"An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose"
[FONT=&quot]http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers[/FONT][/FONT]

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Given that the Booker judging panel is different every year, and has a different chair with a different agenda every year, it's difficult to claim any one thing about it. When Dame Stella Rimmington (former head of MI5) was chair, specifically cited "readability" as a quality she was looking for in their choices. Last year's panel included the actor Dan Stevens - better known as Mathew Crawley from Downton Abbey. He has a lit degree from Cambridge, but I don't think that makes part of the literary establishment.

Anyway, any prize decided upon by a panel always ends up picking the one everybody hated the least, not the best.

I apologize for having half a brain and using it at least part of the time. I'll try and bring myself down to a level you find acceptable. God forbid anybody should ever enjoy something which is beyond *you*.

I find the best translated books are the ones that don't feel translated. Sadly, these are few and far between. One that I quite liked that I read recently was The Alchemist which I think flowed quite nicely in English.

Of course, I suspect it is easier when dealing with two languages that are similar in structure so going from a Romance language to English wouldn't be as big of a stretch as say Japanese to English (which I've read a lot of and seen many translations, good and bad), since English does owe most of its vocabulary to Norman French/Latin, despite technically being a Germanic language.

I didn't get all the way through reading Anna Karenina partially because I was aware it was a translation ... and partly because I was getting tired of reading about Russian farming techniques (apparently I gave up just before the good stuff). I plan to give it another go eventually but with a different translation to see if it goes easier.

I prefer to read French novels in French. The translations just don't do it for me. But I'm lucky because I can read French. A lot of folks want to enjoy French novels, but they don't know a lick of French.

My suggestion: start studying!

The best translators know both languages inside and out, not just grammar and such -- but slang, idioms, and other subtle things. You can't just translate things word for word, sentence by sentence. If you do it this way, it comes out all flat and dull.

This is because the content is meant to be read in the original language! Obviously. A translation is just cluing you in on what the original text was attempting to portray. Translations aren't going to sound good to native English readers because they weren't originally meant to be read in English!

So language-wise, it's not really fair to compare translations to native English literature. C'mon son! Translations are like fuzzy facsimiles.

What I do, when I'm translating from Hindi to English, is translate everything first in order to get the rough meaning down. And then I rework it in English.... English-ify it -- while attempting to stay as close as possible to the source material. A HUGE mistake is losing all of the original cultural tid-bits.

A few years ago I read "Clockwork Orange", translated into my mother tongue. I didn't finish it, partly because of the translation.
The translation was highly praised and rightfully so - it was so good that I could taste the pain, violence, selfishness of the characters. It's one of the books I'll never open again and I have the translator to thank for it. The English version didn't strike me at all, by the way.
And then I read one or other Discworld book where the translator had so painfully missed all the nuances of Pratchett's style. I trudged through the book, but I'll never read anything translated by that person again.
So yes, there are translations and there are translations.

Rhea said:

A few years ago I read "Clockwork Orange", translated into my mother tongue. I didn't finish it, partly because of the translation.
The translation was highly praised and rightfully so - it was so good that I could taste the pain, violence, selfishness of the characters. It's one of the books I'll never open again and I have the translator to thank for it. The English version didn't strike me at all, by the way.
And then I read one or other Discworld book where the translator had so painfully missed all the nuances of Pratchett's style. I trudged through the book, but I'll never read anything translated by that person again.
So yes, there are translations and there are translations.

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So, how did they translate Clockwork Orange? (It's not written in English for those who haven't read it, it's a Russian/Shakesperian/English pidgin IIRC)

Theo81 said:

So, how did they translate Clockwork Orange? (It's not written in English for those who haven't read it, it's a Russian/Shakesperian/English pidgin IIRC)

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Well, the translator obviously had very good command of both English and Russian and also a very disturbing feel of language and style. As I said, the original version didn't strike me language-wise, not the way the translation did. I doubt I'll ever take up this book again.

Liz's Dad said:

Don't start me off on translator pay... It's a profession that demands as much knowledge and skill as lawyers and accountants - if you want it done properly - but is paid much less, no doubt because of the plethora of inept, deluded "translators" who'll work for peanuts. The result is usually what you'd expect, but most companies would rather economise and struggle through something difficult (and frequently inaccurate). That's how it's always been, and that's how it will stay.

End of OT rant!

Back on topic (more or less), Machine Translation has improved dramatically over the past decade, but still has a long way to go for any but the most simple texts, or those for which a technical vocab has been programmed. The problem with it is the rules of logic, ie when does a word mean x and when does it mean y. Since as far as I know these have not yet been systematised (a massive task that would require huge investment), don't expect competent machine translations of literature for decades yet.

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I agree with you on all points and would like to add that whereas a TAP (translation aid programme, like Trados or Wordfast) can be used for translating technical texts (and WF has helped me so much), they can't be used for fiction. Machine translation might (and I'm very hesitant to say it) work inside a language family, but across the families it'll never work.
I apologise to the author of the thread for the OT comment.