Four things make translation tough. 1. Poetic language. Poetry doesn't translate at all well, but people keep trying. For a poetically written novel like Dr. Zhivago, the imagery will come through fine, but the sound of it will be generally flat and unremarkable.
2. Humor. Humor does vary from culture to culture. Sometimes all that's needed for appreciation is to get in the swing of things. But an English-speaking novice first picking up something translated from Spanish or Russian can easily miss the some of the humor (or lack thereof) entirely.
I had discussion with a grad school friend once about a particular new translation of a Czech novel that we were both familiar with. He liked the new translation because it was complete and faithful to the Czech. I preferred an older translation which admittedly is a seriously abbreviated version. Basically I felt you had to know at least some Slavic or a lot of the jokes in the new translation fell flat. The older translation was uproariously funny which I felt gives an English Speaker a better feel for the original.
3. Slang. Works filled with slang are tough to translate and tough for a non-native speaker to read in the original. Solzhenitsyn's prison camp stories and novels are a prime example.
4. Dialect. I have a few of the Harry Potter books in Spanish. Hagrid's unique style of speech is totally lost in Spanish. I can imagine the same is much worse in foreign translations of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-10-07 02:31 pm (UTC)1. Poetic language. Poetry doesn't translate at all well, but people keep trying. For a poetically written novel like Dr. Zhivago, the imagery will come through fine, but the sound of it will be generally flat and unremarkable.
2. Humor. Humor does vary from culture to culture. Sometimes all that's needed for appreciation is to get in the swing of things. But an English-speaking novice first picking up something translated from Spanish or Russian can easily miss the some of the humor (or lack thereof) entirely.
I had discussion with a grad school friend once about a particular new translation of a Czech novel that we were both familiar with. He liked the new translation because it was complete and faithful to the Czech. I preferred an older translation which admittedly is a seriously abbreviated version. Basically I felt you had to know at least some Slavic or a lot of the jokes in the new translation fell flat. The older translation was uproariously funny which I felt gives an English Speaker a better feel for the original.
3. Slang. Works filled with slang are tough to translate and tough for a non-native speaker to read in the original. Solzhenitsyn's prison camp stories and novels are a prime example.
4. Dialect. I have a few of the Harry Potter books in Spanish. Hagrid's unique style of speech is totally lost in Spanish. I can imagine the same is much worse in foreign translations of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.