I recently learned about the debacle that was the Swedish translation of Tolkien, and it got me wondering: “are there books that can only exist within a masterful use of the authors native tongue?”.

  • buckykat [none/use name]
    ·
    10 months ago

    I would expect translating Jabberwocky to be effectively impossible, even explaining it to a fluent ESL speaker is tough

    • casskaydee [she/her]
      ·
      10 months ago

      There's actually a section in my favorite book of all time Gödel, Escher, Bach that talks about two pretty decent translations of that poem into French and German. Here's an excerpt.