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.
Except, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's style appears to in A Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. I can't remember if he translated them himself, though. Some do, which of course does make a huge difference. Or Spanish to English might work better?
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
I would think this would be impossible to translate. I know it's hard for the native language speaker to always grasp slang - since it tends to be regional, ethnic/class/culture specific or generational. Some words mean one thing coming from one character, and something else from another. Slang is something you can only understand per context. Often the dictionary definition is the opposite of how it is being used.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-10-07 04:35 pm (UTC)Except, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's style appears to in A Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. I can't remember if he translated them himself, though. Some do, which of course does make a huge difference. Or Spanish to English might work better?
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
I would think this would be impossible to translate.
I know it's hard for the native language speaker to always grasp slang - since it tends to be regional, ethnic/class/culture specific or generational. Some words mean one thing coming from one character, and something else from another. Slang is something you can only understand per context. Often the dictionary definition is the opposite of how it is being used.