One of the more misogynistic quotes I’ve come across:
“Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.” - Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the famous Russian poet.
But is it true? Can a translation be both faithful and beautiful?
I’ve been reading Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It’s kind of hokey.
You should check out Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise Of The Music Of Language by Douglas Hofstadter. The subject of the book is translation, how it works, and what it does.
The way I’ve heard it is that a translation of a work of art may itself be a work of art, and may even be a good work of art, but it is never the same work of art.
It’s also not faithful – Fitzgerald really didn’t know Persian well.
He also re-ordered the rubai in order to give the impression of the cycle of a day. His translation isn’t complete, nor in the original order.
That said, I have to admit that I like Fitzgerald’s translation, even in comparison to others I’ve read. It might possibly seem “hokey” because it has been quoted so often that many of its more familiar lines (“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou…”) have become clichés. But they were original once.
The line Yevtushenko cites isn’t original with him. I’ve seen it listed as “Russian proverb” – and the version I’ve heard it pithier and arguasbly more misogynistic – “A translation is like a mistress – either beautiful and unfaithful, or faithful and ugly.”
But there is a deep truth in it – if something really is faithful to the original, it often sounds clumsy in the translated language, simply because the exact significance and shades of meaning aren’t the same from one language to another. But if you strive for fluency and phrasing in another language (let alone meter or rhyme) you’re almost invariably going to take liberties with the exact meaning and intent. So I have to agree with the sentiment of the saying in that it is a balancing act for the translator – you want accurate, or you want beautiful? Pick one. I’ve read lots of beautiful translations, like the translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey by that other Fitzgerald. But I also realize that there are different meanings and intentions in the Greek originals.
I tried to track the history of the “translation is like a woman/mistress…” quote, but I haven’t been able to track it far in a brief search. It’s been attributed to “Russian proverb” and to an Indian filmmaker and writer. Using Google N-gram turns up many other metaphors for translation (Cervantes’ “a translation is like looking at the other side of a tapestry”, or “a translation is like looking through a piece of glass”, or many other sentiments), but doesn’t seem to have the one in the title of this thread. Even Wikiquote and Quote Detective seem to be silent.
I haven’t time to look into it now. But this silence doesn’t speak well for this being an old or possible even an authentic “Russian proverb”.
Also, Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu by John Felstiner is worth checking out. It obviously concentrates on poetry and in particular Felstiner’s translation of “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” but talks about literary translation extensively in general. The book is framed around this poem and Felstiner’s process in translating it, from first read of the poem to the final translation.
The proverb does convey the types of accommodations and choices that have to be made when translating. A very literal and accurate translation will, in most cases (except perhaps between two very similar languages) lose some of the “music” of the original. And how much “music” is lost depends on what you’re translating. On one end of the spectrum you have something like a non-fiction technical manual; on the other end you have works of poetry. As you go along the line, the sounds, rhythms, pacing, tone, diction, etc., of the language becomes more and more important, and sacrifices have to be made.
I think the proverb is reasonably instructive, but I wouldn’t be quite so binary about it; I’d say a translation can be beautiful and reasonably faithful–it’s not going to be the exact same work of art, but it can still convey the beauty and meaning of the original, but some sacrifices and difficult choices will have to be made along the way.
Sigrid Undset comes to mind. I loved reading her works in the English translations that date back to the times of the original. The translations read like Joseph Conrad or George Eliot, constantly riveting attention to the mindset of Undset’s times. Now, I recently came across a “new” translation, that sloshes through the paragraphs like Danielle Steele. Ugh.
I don’t read any other language well enough to be able to judge a translation. But when I read Muriel Barbery’s “Elegance of the Hedgehog”, I though to myself, this was probably a very funny book, but translated by someone who has no sense of humor at all.
When I read a translation, I want to feel like I am reading the work of a great writer. I want to feel like the translator has gotten into the soul of the original author
The end of the 1Q84 audiobook has an interview with the two translators who worked on getting it into English. Really fascinating.
At one point, they address the idea in the OP - specifically the idea that one must “read a work in the original” in order to properly appreciate it. Their takeaway was that it’s bullshit, and that the translation itself is its own kind of art. Certainly they were biased, being translators themselves.
I think the big problem here is that the word “faithful” is not the same as the word “literal.” Certainly a literal translation will rarely be beautiful, but a faithful translation is less concerned with words and more concerned with meaning and emotion.
An interesting, if unrelated, note about this particular book is that Haruki Murakami is himself an accomplished translator and easily could have done the work himself. He still entrusted it to others.
I agree with you. While no translation, especially between two disparate languages, will 100% convey all the linguistic nuances of the original, it can still be faithful to the overall spirit of the work. So it does hinge on what one interprets “faithful” to mean.
And of course, I assume the quote in the OP was in Russian, so we’d have to have somebody fluent tell us what they think Yevtushenko meant by whatever word was translated into “faithful.” 
If you do it well:
Translating artistic works in a way that is faithfully evocative of the original often comprises an act of creating art.
Translating artistic works in a way that gets the same basic meaning across in about the same space and reading speed (i.e., movie subtitles) requires creativity.
Translating technical documents requires knowledge.
Heh. Very good.
Thanks everyone. That’s a very informed discussion.
I think there is something to be said about the translation constituting its own artistic work (that is certainly the case in copyright law), and aesthetically, to use this clumsy analogy, while they might both be apples, one might be red and one might be green.
I’ve had cause to read Japanese manga translated into English. Often the sound effects are left in katakana, which means that the non-katakana reading audience misses out. But some of those katakana are very funny in their onomatopoeic application and they might not happily translate into English. There’s an odd balance to be struck with the rare example of a semi-translated work.
If the Translation is ist own Kind of art, that actually underlines why the original should be read (if possible).
By re-writing (which is what good translators do for literature, esp. for Poems), you get across many of the emotions and Topics of the original.
But language is more than just knowing the words and grammar. It’s inevitable that once you gain proficiency in a language, you start to understand the culture(s) that use that language. So reading the original with a high Level of competency will evoke different associations because the original words have different meanings in that culture than in the Translation. (That’s why good translators try their best to replace deliberate allusions or jokes with others that work in the new culture).
A certain Phrase or even single word will remind an English Speaker of Dr. Seuss or Shakespeare or the KJV Bible, because These works are widely known. That doesn’t hold true when the work is translated e.g. to Spanish for Nava - even if the translator chooses a different allusion that works similar in the Spanish culture, it’s not the same.
You see this even in the same language: many School Editions of Shakespeare words come with Little booklets explaining the meaning back then of words (That have changed today), or the Background (why do the witches in Macbeth Need a pilot’s thum? What is a ditch-born babe?)
So when I get a book of Chinese Poems from a thousand years ago translated in my language, they at least footnote some things. For proper understanding, I’d Need to read 500 pages about the cultural Background for Starters.
This quote is apparently an old French joke:
Старая французская шутка: «Перевод как женщина: если красив, то неверен, а если верен, то некрасив».
The words are *veren *and neveren, short-form adjectives. Here, veren is “faithful” in the sense of being true or correct.
It can also mean “loyal”: I promise I will be veren to you while you’re away, darling.
The feminine, neuter, and plural forms are *verna *, verno, and verny, respectively.
Sovershenno verno! = 100% correct!