I can’t recall where I read this, and while it’s surely in one of the books on my bookshelf I can’t be arsed to figure out which.
Anyway … it is the contention of renowned critic whose name I’m too lazy to specify that truly great works of literature cannot, by their very nature, entirely retain the qualities that make them extraordinary when translated into another language than that they were originally composed in. Does anyone care to support or rebut this thesis?
Note that I’m only talking about literature: works primarily meant to be read, not performed.
I think there’s a fair amount of truth to it, and is also related to the effective degradation of great works over time since language and culture changes over time as well as nationality. Shakespeare isn’t as accessible as he once was, and older writers are even worse off.
Maybe so, but someone reading a translation of James Patterson’s latest is going to get much more of the work’s appeal than someone who’s read Joyce or Nabokov in translation.
I’ve read and been awed by translated works, so either they were ubergreat in the original language or greatness doesn’t always get lost in translation.
I wrote the thread title. I think you’re misunderstanding it.
The adage (which I am not saying I entirely believe, though I’m inclined to) means that no work of great literature retains its greatness when translated from one tongue to another. It is not saying that bad literature does not suffer in translation; it’s not commenting on bad literature at all.
Are you fluent in more than one language? Have you read a work which you thought brilliant in its original tongue which seemed equally brilliant in the new language?
I’ve been told that Stieg Larsson’s books improved in translation.
But to the general thesis: I’m sure it’s true.
A true-in-spirit translation must be something of a reinterpretation, but a very uniquely and intangibly constrained one. It’s like a builder being given all the stones from a great cathedral and being asked to make a new one in a completely different city–not just the same one anew, but something of equal architectural value and relevance to its new site. And yet, still containing all the essential, elusive qualities of the original! The translator would have to be an absolute master himself, in both languages. I can’t imagine that happens very often, if ever.
If “It is a mark of…” is not supposed to mean “It is a defining characteristic of…” then I can only presume that you translated your own thread title from the Japanese. If what was intended was “Great literature is inevitably diminished in translation,” well, that’s what you should have said, as it is a very different statement.
<nitpickery>“It is a MARK of great literature…” In other words, a distinguishing feature of great literature. Distinguishing great literature from what, exactly, if not from “not great” literature? It may be true that great literature loses greatness in the translation but if you say it’s also true that bad literature also suffers from translation, then such loss of quality is not a mark of GREAT literature and the statement is false.
The question of whether all great literature necessarily loses something in translation is a fine debate, but the adage states something slightly different from that.</nitpickery>
Firstly, the title of your thread is syntactically confusing. If you’re trying to say that it’s exclusively a mark of great literature, you should have said so. Biffy the Elephant Shrew’s interpretation is perfectly legitimate.
Secondly, it’s sometimes, maybe even mostly true. It’s a problem of syntax and vocabulary. Kafka’s work, for example, suffers in translation because some of the words he uses have no counterpart in English. The most immediate example is the German word Ungeziefer, which he uses to describe Gregor Samsa in the opening of *The Metamorphosis *. Most English versions of the text use the word insect as a translation for Ungeziefer, and in doing so, they obliterate some of the subtleties of the word, which does mean an insect-like creature, but also means dirty and unclean, two words which go to the heart of Gregor’s condition. A German (or somebody articulate in the German language) has a more profound understanding of the text, at least in the beginning, because he or she understands that Ungeziefer connotes more than the English word ‘insect’.
Additionally, the impact of Kafka’s language is diminished in translation. German verbs will often come at the end of the sentence, and Kafka’s writing, on a very basic level, was built around delivering meaning with that in mind. Some of his sentences were very long, and the full impact of their meaning was delayed until the very end of the sentence, where the action verbs made clear what was going on. That’s something that’s difficult account for in English translations. It’s also one of the reasons why poetry can be very difficult to translate.
It is a mark of great literature that much of its greatness is lost in translation." True or false?
I’ll say ‘false’. The counter example I’ll use will be Faust by Goethe.
I learned a little German in high school and college - forgotten most of it, and could never really say that I ‘spoke’ it. Lots of irony in Faust, but I can’t say for sure whether a native German speaker would pick out the same kind of irony that I found by necessarily partly translating it into English. Near the beginning, God is surrounded in heaven by angels chanting high-flown poetry about the beauty of the creation. Mephistopheles shows up and God asks him what he thinks about the new creature, “man”. Mephistopheles is unimpressed: “You’ve given him a little bit of heaven’s light. He calls it ‘sensibility’ and uses it to be more animal than any animal.”
Much the same in German as in English.
Theres a lot of other good zingers in that book that work just as well in both languages – and timeless themes, et cetera – and Part II has got enough obscure, jumbled references to be just as incomprehensible in both languages. Anyhow, I’d call it all great literature.
So, you lacked the understanding to read it in the original and compare that to the translated version, but still use Faust, one of the highest works of literature, as counter-example? Ohhh-kay, I call that a “miss”.
I’ve heard the idea expressed in the OP worded differently by a famous Spanish writer, who said (paraphrased) that a great work of literature is like a Gobelin*, and reading a translation is like watching the Gobelin from behind.
And yes, I agree it’s true; even in the same language, once a few centuries pass, language and society has changed so much that meanings and nuances are lost.
But on the other hand, without translations it’s impossible to read part* of the world’s great literature outside your own language. (And it’s also impossible to learn a dozen languages to read Shakespeare as well as the Bhagadavita and African works etc.) So it’s a necessary compromise.
Additionally, for works of great literature, interpretation aids are available to give context about the author and the culture it was created in, so that can fill some gaps. It’s not the same but the best that’s possible.
It’s hard to read all of the world’s literature if you still need to go to work to eat every day, or have a life with friends and family.
Language is a practical-but-inefficient means of communication
The “accuracy” of the communication connection between writer and reader is tenuous at best - subjective, dynamic, multi-layered
A translation is just a second-generation of inefficiency
But with no way to measure what is lost - or gained - in the translation since language is an inefficient medium at best - who can truly say if a work is lost in tranlsation (although I love reading about the power of Kafka in German - thank you).
If someone would never have read the work unless it was translated, which is better: Appreciate the access, or cluck over the relative purity of an inefficient medium?
I cannot say for sure if it’s guaranteed but I do know that works translated from Urdu or Hindi do lose some of the poetry and sweeping beauty. Personally, I think it’s inevitable.
Yes and yes. Of course, your taste in books may vary. I’m in awe of people who can translate GK Chesterton, Wodehouse, GB Shaw or Pterry and make books full of puns and plays on words work and work beautifully in a completely different language. I don’t think I’ve ever read the translation into English of a Spanish literary author, unless you count songs.
Translating poetry is more difficult, partly because languages which have, say, this XXX much distance in prose may be this XXXXXXXX distant when it comes to poetry. For example, English and Spanish have different punctuation rules, but if you use those from a language in the other one it’s still understandable; our poetry on the other hand is measured differently and our rhymes work differently. How the Hades do you translate sonetos into sonnets when they aren’t even the same form, their verses aren’t measured the same way, and the notions of what rhymes and what doesn’t are different? 99% of the great works of English language poetry (and yes, that includes some by Shakespeare) would be considered ripios (horrid wants-to-be-poetry and fails by a couple thousand miles material) if those rhyming techniques were used by a Spanish language author.
Yes. I’ve read Cyrano de Bergerac in French and English (with the Hooker translation). Both were equal in both languages. (I know this was about novels, not plays, but I’m talking about the reading, not the performing.)
It depends on the skill of the translator. Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, who reads both English and Spanish, is on record as saying One Hundred Years of Solitude was better in English than in his original Spanish.
Some works are untranslatable, especially if the depend on wordplay. But a good translation can make most great literature work in any language.
This was going to be my example of a book that I would be surprised if it were superior in the original language simply because the translation was so good.
