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Lost in translation

fluffy bunny

fluffy bunny

Member
What are your opinions on Non-English books being translated over into English? Authors such as Dumas, Lem, Tolstoy? Surely some passages/words can't be translated over without losing something. Aren't we at the mercy of the translators, some of whom put their own personal slant on things?

What about those books where several translations exist?

Do some of the more multilingual members prefer to read books in their original language?
 
Some translations are just so bad - it really depends. Of course, to be true to the original you need to read it in its original language, but there are some good translations out there.

Whilst studying French literature I read Zola in French and in English - I have to say the English translation was not half as good as the French and some of the translation was decidedly dodgy.

I have also read modern writers like Stephen King in French and English and sometimes it is interesting to read both versions simultaneously to see the differences - sometimes it is quite close and sometimes the translation has been 'lazy'. If you get my meaning. :)
 
As I can only speak my native tongue, translations are a necessary evil. The worst thing about translations is that they become dated so quickly.
 
How about translations from English to English.?

A number of months ago I read Official Assassin by Captain Peter Mason. It's a biogrpphical work about Masson serving for the British SAS durring WW2.
I don't know how much of it was British slang, military jargon or just out dated terms but it took me a while to digest what I was reading.

RaVeN
 
I've only recently started reading books which have been translated. This book forum has a lot to answer for! I'm in the middle of Gabriel Garcia Marquez at work, Haruki Murakami at home, and I read Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier last year. The latter, I loved. Sad, romantic, poignant. I think the fact that it had been translated added to its appeal, ie some of it didn't entirely make sense, but it added to the style.

Third Man Girl
 
Umberto Eco has recently published a book called Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. It is reviewed by the Guardian here. The book recounts Eco's own experience with using translators and discusses how the art of translation should be, as mentioned in the title, a negotiation between the author and the translation.

For example, in one of his novels there is an instance whereby a character can only view the world from an intellectual point of view and the sentence uses a piece of Italian that every Italian should know. In other languages, the reader wouldn't be expected to get the reference so the translation was negotiated to make reference to something that the readers of the relevant language would understand. The English translation referred to a Keats poem.

The same goes with his Russian translation. Where Romance and Teutonic languages would understand the Latin that Eco often uses, the Russians - with their Cyrillic alphabet - wouldn't understand the Latin. The negotiation with his Russian translator was made to refer to old Slavic texts instead.

Now, if only every author took as much care when their work was/is being translated.

An 80 minute speech by Eco on the subject of translation can be found here.
 
The only translation I've ever read is Jose Saramago's Blindness, which is one of my favourite novels ever, so the translator (from Portugese to English, by the way) can't have done a bad job.

And besides that, I'm studying to be a translator, so mind your words; I'll be listening.

Cheers, Martin :cool:
 
i can tell you about english to spanish books
i read a lot of books in english since paperbacks come first in english and they are cheaper than hardcovers in spanish
(assuming english is the original language)
it depends in the translator, i read LASHER in a paper back edition
in an U.S. book house (random house i think) then i read a Grijalbo edition (a big book house that seems to be in every spanish speaking country since forever, -just researched- mexican house merged with italian one -mondadori-, and now its call random house mondadori) with a really nice translation, and then i read it in an spaniard (its that the right word in english?) house call ediciones zeta, which was lousy, (they even change the name -which i not sure but think its a first name -used like that in the book- to IMPULSOR -meaning IMPELLER- its any conection betwen lasher and impeller that im not aware of? i mean after reading the books i can find some sense to the word but it wasnt the autor intention to name the book like that, and i dont think the word impeller its very used -if it is actually used which i doubt- in the books) i notice cause i was looking for a certain paragraft and it wasnt there, so i took my U.S. copy and start comparing and there was a lot of bits missing (the first and last time i read a book from zeta)

so i would say it depends on the translator (and the book house that affords to have bad translators) - my advice if you are goin to buy a translated book, always try to buy it from a book house which you know its reliable and prestigious. even if that means buying a second hand edition -and save some money ;) -

:mad: im really starting to hate my touch pad (im using a laptop) i had to write all over again because of the go back funtion :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
 
Lousy translations are driving me nuts!

I'm just reading Over the Edge by Jonathan Kellerman in German and its full of lousy translations and misspellings. :mad: :mad: :mad:


I just stumpled over this little jewel (I'm translating it back into English as good as I can):

Question: How long have you two been together?
Answer: About 7 months. Next Tuesday is our birthday.

They translated birthday instead of anniversary!!!



That's why I hate reading books in translation. When they arn't really high appreciated masterworks of literature, they do a sloppy translation. :mad:
 
It's always hard to translate, because no matter what people may claim, it's very very very VERY hard to be fully bilingual. And unless you are, you're bound to make silly mistakes, like that one. It's human error, not disrespect. But yes, I do understand how annoying it is. I love reading books in French, and I often laugh at the bad translation jobs.
 
understand that very well.

i cannot laugh at those silly translations. but very very very angry. because so much beauty lost in process of translating.
 
Well, first of all, thank you!

Secondly, that is just a very sloppy mistake - of the translator, of course, but also of the publishing company. A translation should always be proofread by an editor to filter out exacly those small but very annoying mistakes. Either that hasn't happened in this case, or the editor is just as faulty as the translator.

I haven't read that many translations in my life (two I do remember; House of Leaves and Blindness) and fortunately both of them were excellent.

Cheers
 
Although most people are probably sick of his name from my posts, Umberto Eco's novels get excellent translations between different language from the original Italian. This is because he works with the translators to ensure that the translation isn't just a literal interpretation but that cultural references in one language are changed to reflect the culture of another (i.e. a reference to a traditional Italian song was changed, in the English translation, to a line of Keats)

Unfortunately, most authors don't give a damn about the translation of their work; as long as it sells.
 
That really speaks for Eco, because what you said is absolutely true - many authors don't give a hoot. Which is something I just don't understand. Here's this novel, which has taken years of your life to complete, and then you just disregard every other language out there!

That's just odd, to me.

Cheers
 
Martin said:
Which is something I just don't understand. Here's this novel, which has taken years of your life to complete, and then you just disregard every other language out there!

That's just odd, to me.

Cheers
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I find this a really strange thing to say.

As a novelist, your language is the material of your product, it is your product. A translation is really a different book. I would say, the better the original book, the more challenging it is to have a worthy translation.

IMO, there is no way the original author can control that outcome without almost writing the translation him/herself, which is only possible if one deeply understands the language you are translating into.

Language in a good book is so resonant with culture and context and innuendo that it is virtually impossible for any translation to be literally true to the original. Eco is exceptional because he knows many languages deeply and will virtually write another book in order to convey his original intent. Most novelists don't have that skill or even that engagement with intent.

It's not that one disregards other languages; most authors are very far from even having the linguistic capacity to make judgments about the translation of their work.
 
Sure, but a hands-on approach, by working alongside the translator to create the perfect translation is always a possibility.

Cheers
 
Martin said:
Sure, but a hands-on approach, by working alongside the translator to create the perfect translation is always a possibility.
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Exactly. Reverting to Eco again, he doesn't speak Russian but worked with his translator on creating a version of The Name of the Rose in Russian. The translator came to him saying that the passages in Latin (and these are important passages) would be absolutely useless within a book written in Russian Cyrillic as readers wouldn't understand the different character set. The solution was to translate the Latin into Old Church Slavonic so that the passages still appeared aged, authoritarian, and esoteric while the characterset remained readable to the Russian book buyer.

One of the languages he didn't assist with the translation of was The Name of the Rose into Arabic. It was released under the dubious title of Sex in the Monastery; the sex itself lasting three pages within a five hundred page tome.
 
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