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What's more difficult to translate... | Good advice

Phil Hand — Sat, 21 Mar 2015 15:47:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Phil Hand
Post title: Good advice

Thanks, Giles. You're right, always be on the lookout for good non-content, as well as good content.

What's more difficult to translate... | Easing the pain

Giles Watson — Sat, 21 Mar 2015 06:50:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Giles Watson
Post title: Easing the pain

[quote]Phil Hand wrote:

[quote]Texte Style wrote:

...mostly disappointingly devoid of meaning. And so, there's no challenge. [/quote]
This just reminded me of the difficulty of translating sentences where a writer is studiously not saying anything. E.g. "I don't think now is the right time to be addressing issues which are not central to the question before us today..." I am always filled with the urge to translate it as "I'm ducking this question" - but that would be rather a failure to capture the tone of the original. [/quote]

When you're readingIlistening in your target language and come across a nice functional equivalent for one of these source-language faffs, it's a good idea to slip the pair into a termbase so that even if you can't remember it, your computer will.

What's more difficult to translate... | Sometimes I have to struggle to keep the meaning out...

Phil Hand — Sat, 21 Mar 2015 05:52:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Phil Hand
Post title: Sometimes I have to struggle to keep the meaning out...

[quote]Texte Style wrote:

...mostly disappointingly devoid of meaning. And so, there's no challenge. [/quote]
This just reminded me of the difficulty of translating sentences where a writer is studiously not saying anything. E.g. "I don't think now is the right time to be addressing issues which are not central to the question before us today..." I am always filled with the urge to translate it as "I'm ducking this question" - but that would be rather a failure to capture the tone of the original.

What's more difficult to translate... | Well, opinions can differ

Balasubramaniam L. — Sat, 21 Mar 2015 03:19:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Balasubramaniam L.
Post title: Well, opinions can differ

[quote]Texte Style wrote:

Because if the writer is saying something meaningful, in a beautiful way, I want to make sure that the meaning and beauty shine through my translation and that's a huge challenge. (A highly enjoyable challenge but truly tough. I'll only feel good if I manage to pull it off, but then I'll feel grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!)

A politician out to garner a few more votes by throwing out hollow promises (with or without Tom's kitchen sink), and pandering to the lowest common denominator... it can be a challenge, especially if I agree with what she's saying. If I didn't agree I just wouldn't be able to translate it. I have translated the speeches of some politicians and have to agree with Neilmac, they're mostly disappointingly devoid of meaning. And so, there's no challenge. [/quote]

If a thing doesn't interest me, I have to force myself to translate it, which can make it a very unpleasant job, and hence very difficult.

If a thing is interesting, it is a joy to deal with it, even the challenging part of capturing the elusive beauty of the original in your target language. It fills you with a sensation of achievement and elation when you have done it, and that is what makes it a breeze.

In the case of the uninteresting stuff, it leaves you drained and exhausted when you have finally got it out of the way, adding to the unpleasantness and difficulty level of the task.

In other words, translating an interesting document is its own reward, while in the case of an uninteresting document, it is a punishment which you are forced to endure.

[Edited at 2015-03-21 03:35 GMT]

What's more difficult to translate... | I would say the most interesting is the most difficult

Kay Denney — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:00:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Kay Denney
Post title: I would say the most interesting is the most difficult

Because if the writer is saying something meaningful, in a beautiful way, I want to make sure that the meaning and beauty shine through my translation and that's a huge challenge. (A highly enjoyable challenge but truly tough. I'll only feel good if I manage to pull it off, but then I'll feel grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!)

A politician out to garner a few more votes by throwing out hollow promises (with or without Tom's kitchen sink), and pandering to the lowest common denominator... it can be a challenge, especially if I agree with what she's saying. If I didn't agree I just wouldn't be able to translate it. I have translated the speeches of some politicians and have to agree with Neilmac, they're mostly disappointingly devoid of meaning. And so, there's no challenge.

What's more difficult to translate... | The least interesting is the most difficult

Balasubramaniam L. — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:42:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Balasubramaniam L.
Post title: The least interesting is the most difficult

I can say this out of experience.

If the subject is uninteresting it is difficult to translate. If it is interesting, it is a breeze. This applies to all genres, whether literature, politics, technical, legal and so on.

Among genres, I find poetry most difficult, almost impossible. You can only paraphrase it. This is because poetry has meanings at several levels, and a lot of it pinned to culture and goes much beyond the literal meanings of the words of the poetry. In this way, a poem conveys more meaning than the sum of the meanings of the words with which it is composed. Beyond the meaning, the structure of the poetry is another hurdle - the metre, the rhythm, the rhymes, the cadence, the imageries, etc., are difficult to reproduce in another language.

Another difficult area is food menus and fashion. They come replete with words that are specific to a culture and cannot be translated. I do a lot of airline menus and it is a daily struggle to get the menus written in another language into elegant comprehensible Hindi.

What's more difficult to translate... | Proust's

Randa Farhat — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 10:35:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Randa Farhat
Post title: Proust's

[quote]interpretwhisky wrote:

What is easier to write?

A politician's speech or a literary work? [/quote]

Exactly.

What's more difficult to translate... | Joyce's Italian

Tom in London — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 09:23:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Tom in London
Post title: Joyce's Italian

Joyce himself, who as a person "estranged" from the English language, spoke Italian (including the dialect of the Venezia Giulia, the region where he and his family lived and where he habitually wrote, spoke, and gave lectures in Triestino dialect) published various newspaper articles in the more "correct" Florentine and indeed made his own attempt at writing a version of the "Finnegans Wake stream of consciousness manner" - directly in Italian. See (for example) "Scritti Italiani. a Cura Di Gianfranco Corsini E Giorgio Melchiori" [url removed]

-- and you'll enjoy this:

[url removed]

and this:

[url removed]

[Edited at 2015-03-19 09:33 GMT]

What's more difficult to translate... | I've never read Proust

Diana Obermeyer — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 08:58:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Diana Obermeyer
Post title: I've never read Proust

I did read Joyce. I would judge that both authors fall into the same category of literary genius.

It took me 14 months to finish reading Ulysses, constantly having to return to previous chapters, because I had missed details that were necessary to understand later sections. I would never ever think about attempting a translation. I'm quite happy to say "Yes, I've read it and I attained a rough, basic understanding."
There's a famous quote: "What did you do in the Great War Mr Joyce?" "I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?"
I would place the translation of such a literary pearl in similar high regard. Very few people exist that would be able to produce a translation that comes close to the standard of the original. And even for those, it would be a life-time achievement.

Political speeches are meant to be understood by the common man. Yes, there are subtleties, inconsistencies and word plays, but even the most polished speech uses a language that the common person can follow. They are meant to be understood and have a particular short-term impact which can usually be defined. That even applies to the most polished and famous speeches.

What's more difficult to translate... | “Persian rhetoric is not always easy for English-speakers to interpret”

Tom in London — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 08:48:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Tom in London
Post title: “Persian rhetoric is not always easy for English-speakers to interpret”

The classic case was the very inaccurate (and tendentious) translation of a reference made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 when, quoting second-hand from a statement previously made not by him, but by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had said it in a public forum five years previously, he said that “Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive".

For some reason this became the conviction that Ahmadinejad had said that Israel "should be wiped off the map". This conviction still remains, in the minds of many. This is not what he said, and no map was mentioned.

A very good example of how rhetoric in translation becomes, in itself, another form of rhetoric.

[url removed]

We are probably being fed these tendentious translations every day, and have no way of knowing whether what we're hearing is the truth or someone is manipulating the information fed to us. I imagine it's happening right now. Vladimir Putin has recently been quoted as having said that he was ready to arm Russia's nuclear weapons; but as a non-Russian speaker, I don't know whether he said exactly that, or something like it, or something completely different. What I do know is that language differences can be used for nefarious purposes.

Makes you think.....

[Edited at 2015-03-19 09:45 GMT]

What's more difficult to translate... | What is easier to write?

Georgie Scott — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 08:20:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Georgie Scott
Post title: What is easier to write?

A politician's speech or a literary work?

What's more difficult to translate... | Internal coherence in speeches

Noni Gilbert Riley — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 07:58:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Noni Gilbert Riley
Post title: Internal coherence in speeches

[quote]neilmac wrote re political speeches:

What was surprising for me was finding out how a text which appears to be coherent and meaningful when delivered spoken makes little sense when you see it written down.

[/quote]

Ha ha, yes, I discovered this when giving a translation course: not even Obama and Churchill stand up completely to the test. But the discovery quite hooked my students - and gave me lots of extra work because they kept handing in translations I hadn't even set!

What's more difficult to translate... | Proust

neilmac — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 07:04:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: neilmac
Post title: Proust

I've translated political speeches before. I didn't find them hard to translate at all. What was surprising for me was finding out how a text which appears to be coherent and meaningful when delivered spoken makes little sense when you see it written down.

On the other hand, I often have problems with poetry, literature or anything "arty", probably due to the surfeit of possibilities. Even in advertising texts it can be hard to get the right "feel", so for example a ten word catchphrase might take an hour to brainstorm and translate satisfactorily.

What's more difficult to translate... | Nice to see the profession getting some discussion

Phil Hand — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 02:44:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Phil Hand
Post title: Nice to see the profession getting some discussion

I've just put up a comment:

There's quite a simple rule of thumb for artistic/rhetorical texts: the better the writing, the harder it is to translate. To render Proust well in another language, you have to be as good a writer as him on the sentence-by-sentence level (of course, you don't need to have his scope of vision - but it helps!)
Similarly, if you're talking about the great political speeches - the best of Churchill, MLK, Thucydides - then you have to be a great speechwriter in whatever language you're translating into. Sometimes political speeches can present extra problems, because the political concerns of one country may have no resonance in another, it's hard to make the content sing.
But in general, novels are of higher quality (because they are worked on for longer), so they are more difficult than political speeches.

And as you rightly note, absolute fidelity is not always the best way. It often depends on what you're translating for. A novel in France is a novel in England; but a political speech in the UK may become a news report in France. As the nature of the text changes, the way you translate changes, too.

What's more difficult to translate...

Noni Gilbert Riley — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 22:29:00 +0000

Forum: Off topic
Topic: What's more difficult to translate...
Poster: Noni Gilbert Riley

... a politician's speech or a literary work like Proust's?

[url removed]

I don't suppose the discussion that this question will provoke in the Guardian, where the question has been posed today, will be much like the one that it would provoke here...