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?”.

help-circle
  • bubbalu [they/them]
    hexbear
    16
    5 months ago

    Counterpoint to this, 'Sphinx' by Anne Garreta should have been impossible to translate from french to english. The book is a dark romance between two lovers whose genders are never mentioned and yet it still flows perfectly and imperceptibly. IN french you do this by saying 'their bodypart brushed against me' since the possessive takes the gender of the noun and not the possessor. There was a masterful and lyrical translation that captures the essence of the book without access to the same grammatical tricks.

    link
    fedilink
    • @GinAndJuche
      hexagon
      hexbear
      6
      5 months ago

      That’s really cool, I always like it when authors do stuff like that.

      link
      fedilink
      • bubbalu [they/them]
        hexbear
        5
        5 months ago

        Yeah! It's a great book. The translator Anna Ramadan is really talented, too.

        link
        fedilink
  • buckykat [none/use name]
    hexbear
    13
    5 months ago

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

    link
    fedilink
    • casskaydee [she/her]
      hexbear
      4
      5 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.

      link
      fedilink
    • @GinAndJuche
      hexagon
      hexbear
      13
      5 months ago

      The real tragedy of being Italian is they’ll never understand the pagliacci pizza knock knock joke in the original Brooklyn accented English

      link
      fedilink
  • iridaniotter [she/her, they/them]
    hexbear
    12
    5 months ago

    I mean, poetry in general can't really be translated. Take Classical Chinese for instance. You have a couple lines that due to the nature of Classical Chinese already has multiple interpretations, so you gotta make sure you figure out the right one. Then you translate that to English, but if it's an idiom then you either localize it or provide a few sentences of context. And even then you've lost the syllable and rhyme scheme, so perhaps you teach your English students to at least read Chinese even if they're not fluent. But Classical Chinese is so phonologically different that Mandarin pronunciation is only slightly better than just saying it in English.

    link
    fedilink
  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
    hexbear
    10
    5 months ago

    Somehow Finnegans Wake has been translated into many of the larger languages, and the wiki page doesnt mention anything about inaccuracy or being just fucked up, which boggles my mind.

    link
    fedilink
    • RedDawn [he/him]
      hexbear
      7
      5 months ago

      Came here to say Finnegans Wake, the book is barely in English to begin with

      link
      fedilink
  • @GinAndJuche
    hexagon
    hexbear
    8
    5 months ago

    I would argue that “Gormenghast”, by Peake, is so very much about the diction that a translation would lose something.

    The imagery is an attempt to paint with words that which is of a scope that canvas cannot contain it, but on top of that the sentences are brushstrokes. The way the syllables flow are delectable.

    It would take a talent equal to the authors in English in addition to a similar mastery of the language being translated to.

    link
    fedilink
      • @GinAndJuche
        hexagon
        hexbear
        6
        5 months ago

        I was highly reticent for a while, but I read a review that described it as: (paraphrasing) a hauntology of fantasy if Tolkien was never published.

        If it weren’t for Tolkien, Peake would have dominated the genre with the power of his vision.

        link
        fedilink
  • davel [he/him]
    hexbear
    6
    5 months ago

    Or the opposite.

    …Impossible not to properly translate? confusion

    link
    fedilink
    • @GinAndJuche
      hexagon
      hexbear
      8
      5 months ago

      A book better in translation.

      link
      fedilink
  • Egon [they/them]
    hexbear
    2
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Not books but plays:
    I think The Laramie Project would be very difficult to translate. Lots of idioms.
    Shakespeare too. You either lose the rhythm or the content. I've read a lot of really bad translations of shakespeare.

    link
    fedilink