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Post by smith on Dec 2, 2014 22:19:20 GMT 9
An interesting point brought up in the "Quiet Manor" thread. How should one go about translating literature? Translating a piece too literally will leave you with a jumbled mess of a story that would be a chore to read. However not keeping close enough to the source material will give you a translation which is incorrect.
I'm interested to people's opinions on this.
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Post by smith on Dec 5, 2014 9:00:55 GMT 9
I might as well get the ball rolling on this one.
I guess the first thing you have to consider is the reason for a translation. An instruction manual to a DVD player that makes that god damn grinding noise every time I skip a scene would need to be translated in such a way that anyone would be able to read it and understand how to work that disc-scratching piece of junk. Without clear instructions on how to play DVDs and set the machine to record your favourite shows, the manual would be pointless. It needs to strictly adhere to the source. This is an example of a literal, or 'accurate' translation.
Subtitles for a movie are translated so that the viewer will be able to understand the plot of the film without breaking their concentration, without ruining their viewing experience. For that reason, movie subtitles are simplified and smooth over a lot of the details in order to be effective. There are also timing issues which mean that the subtitles often do not match the dialogue of the film at all, but they still tell the same story. This is an example of a paraphrased, or 'fluent' translation.
The 'accuracy' vs 'fluency' debate is as old as translation itself (probably, I don't actually know). But into which category does literary translation fall?
Again, you have to consider who exactly the translation is being produced for.
In an academic setting, a translation of a literary piece would be produced for a professor who would grade the translation, and perhaps other students who would discuss the word usage and grammar of the piece. It may even be submitted to an academic journal as an example of linguistic study. In that instance, a more literal, or 'accurate' translation would be best.
Things are much different outside of the classroom, however. When translating a piece of literature for the public, for mass consumption, the one you are translating for is the reader. A reader doesn't particularly care about the word usage or the grammar of the source material, all they are worried about is if the story is interesting to read. If you can't produce a readable translation, then there really is no point in translating the piece to begin with.
The rabbit hole runs a little deeper than just those points. When you read a story in Japanese, you must try to capture not only the meaning of the grammar and vocabulary used, but also the intent, tone, atmosphere and message. You have to hear the author's voice. If you translate a short story literally, not only do you produce a piece that no one would want to read, but you also fail to capture all the aspects of the story which aren't actually written down. In that sense, it would be a mistranslation, despite each word being translated correctly. A literal translation of a piece is really just the first step in producing a readable translation.
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Post by elipsett on Dec 5, 2014 10:18:05 GMT 9
I think the key difference between technical translation and literary translation is depth. A technical translation should be impossible to misinterpret; no matter who reads it, they should get exactly the same information. If the disc makes a grinding noise, press button A. Depending on cultural issues, the translator may need to insert additional information that a reader in the source language would already know, but the reader in the destination might not, or revise to match the destination. Maybe the source manual says to ground a washing machine to the electrical outlet in Japan, but in the US it might suggest grounding it to the (copper) water pipe. There is still little room for reader interpretation.
In literature, however, a lot of meaning is in the peripheral information, "between the lines." This can be general cultural information (Japanese assume that a person takes off his shoes when entering the home, bt it might not be stated in the text), or something that draws on widely known information (baseball players often marry TV newscasters, who are almost always young and beautiful) or other creative works (references to Dazai or Miyazawa in Japanese, or quotes from the Bible in English). Unless that information is already known to the reader of the translation, the translation needs to add it in somehow.
Every time the translator adds something, he is creating a new work based on but clearly not the same as the original. And since different translators write differently, you can end up with four translations of Genji, for example. I read Waley's a long time ago and thought it very dark; the Seidensticker translation was light and airy. They both worked off the same source material and made very different choices (although the definition of "translation was a bit different in Waley's time).
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Post by elipsett on Dec 5, 2014 10:23:25 GMT 9
It a piece of translated literature SOUNDS like a translation, it may not be very well received in the target language. One of my teachers years ago (Prof. Itami, in fact) referred to this as バター臭い when referring a Japanese translation from English, and as 日本語が透けて見える when referring to an English translation of Japanese. I usually just call the latter example 醤油臭い。 Japanese is a very different language from English: it prefers the passive, it doesn't even have sentence subjects (although the thematic は often maps properly), it rarely specifies gender or quantity, and it is often impossible to even tell whether something is past, present, or future. All of that information must be added by the translator (personal interpretation, in many cases), in such as way that the result sounds like natural English. I have a nice sample of this for E2J, using a Poe story, and have put it up for everyone to ooh and aah over, here: www.kurodahan.com/downloads/PoeComparison.pdfWhen a reviewer in the New York Times says a work has been "brilliantly translated," what they mean is it reads well in English. It might be a terrible translation, with huge chunks of excised material, complete fabrications added by the translator and all sorts of mistranslations, but if it sounds good in English, it may be hailed as a masterpiece. It is the translator's masterpiece, though, not the author's. For example, read this piece on the Rubiyat: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam |
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Post by elipsett on Dec 5, 2014 14:03:56 GMT 9
Here's a second example to look at. The translation is from Latin into English, and no, I don't read Latin. But there are two English translations, both very accurate (I am told). They are rather interesting to compare... www.kurodahan.com/downloads/Bassnett.Catullus.pdf |
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Post by rmedhurst on Dec 9, 2014 20:38:49 GMT 9
I think the aim is convey exactly the information to the English reader that the Japanese reader would get (the whole information and nothing but the information). Of course, when I say "information" that would include tone and various other intangible properties. But it is also critical to put what would seem natural to a Japanese reader into equally natural English.
Probably not really disagreeing or adding anything there, but the interesting part for me is how to interpret the above in specific cases.
Edit: Oh, and naturally it has to be a good read too or there is no point.
Edit 2: And now I look again, I seem to be partly repeating what was above...
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Post by elipsett on Dec 10, 2014 21:18:32 GMT 9
It can be tough to figure out where the line is between what the author really wanted to convey, and what the translator knows, though.
I'm always upset when I'm watching a TV show or movie in (for example) English with Japanese titles, and then n the bad guys are shown muttering in Russian. English-speaking viewers will have no idea of what is being said except that it is foreign.
In Japan, though, the Russian is also subtitled, providing Japanese viewers with significantly more information than English-speaking viewers.
It's like these "annotated Alice" etc, where somebody explains every single reference in the book, no matter how obscure. Yes, they are interesting. No, they should not really be worried about when reading the book for pleasure.
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Post by smith on Dec 12, 2014 15:00:11 GMT 9
(This post is in reply to another post that disappeared for some reason)
Modern and contemporary works? Sure, no problem.
Classical works? It's a little hit-or-miss. Like most other people from English speaking countries, I was made to study Shakespeare in high school, and while I do understand the plays, I can't help but feel the subtleties of his work are lost on me. But then again, what exactly *is* classical literature? I think there is a school of thought that states classical literature refers exclusively to texts from ancient Greece and Rome. I don't know if I agree with that definition.
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Post by elipsett on Dec 13, 2014 11:25:35 GMT 9
I can recall English lit classes in HS and university (this is sometime in the previous century, mind you, shortly after the invention of fire) in which different people had wildly different interpretations of stories and books.
I have no doubt that individual interpretations are quite different between different people even in a single language.
Is the difference great enough to invalidate a particular translation?
Depends, but I think often yes, it would be.
I gave an introductory lecture on literatary translation last year, and at the end of the talk invited interested students to collaboratively translate a very short (maybe 150 words or so) story into Japanese. After 30 minutes of considerable discussion, I finally pointed out that they hadn't yet decided if the narrator was male or female... Everybody assumed it was female because it was talking about being in a love with a man, but there was no explicit mention of the speaker's gender, and while I also believe it was a woman speaking, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume it was a man. Which would obviously change the whole thrust of the story...
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Post by elipsett on Jan 8, 2015 15:50:17 GMT 9
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Post by elipsett on Jan 9, 2015 9:26:42 GMT 9
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Post by smith on Jan 9, 2015 9:46:48 GMT 9
That kind of biased reporting is all too common in modern journalism, particularly online journalism. Anything to get those clicks. I've had to install a bullshit filter in my mind to focus solely on the facts when I read online news articles.
That's also one of the reasons I enjoy literary translation; people very rarely have an agenda to push when they translate something. They normally just do it because the love the source material.
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