[mention]John Little[/mention] Thanks for opening this thread about [mention]Stasia[/mention]' s post. I was feeling guilty about thread drift in the Jumble thread.
John Little wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:38 am
Stasia's post in the Quick Brown Fox thread about book translations reminded me that I have read a few translated books and have wondered the same thing. How much of the translator is in the translation and how much of the original author is lost?
I thought this Wikipedia article was very good
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation
Particularly the section on Theories and metaphrase (literal) and paraphrase (free)
Translations of books can be regarded as either good or poor books, or good or poor translations.
Some genres will be infinitely more difficult than others.
It's asking a lot to expect a translator to be as inspired as a great author, although it sometimes happens.
I think it's pretty much unforgivable if a translator loses any of the original author, except perhaps, where the translator misses something obscure. When a translator starts leaving stuff out they become an editor, not a translator.
Sometimes a translator might be at a loss for an apt translation and become a little wordy, trying to get something across. That's ok, or at leastforgiveable.
See the examples of the translations of the Don Quixote first sentence here
https://welovetranslations.com/2022/03/ ... te-part-1/
John Little wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:38 am
Ive read Spanish and Japanese books in their English translation and our son's mother in law has read Joyce's Ulyses translated into Portuguese.
I have tried to read Ulyses several times myself and only succeeded recently. But that made me wonder if Ulyses in portugues could possibly be the same
Surely not.
Given how deeply rooted Ulysses is in 1900s Dublin, what would you do? Move the whole thing to Lisbon?
I wouldn't mind seeing an English translation of Ulyses some time <g>