this year I started to read more books translated from other languages (mainly Japanese and French original work). I am fluent in both English and German and sometimes would wonder if it would be better to read the English or German translation.
does anyone feel like different translations convey the original work differently or does it maybe more so depend on the translator themselves?
by funnyingredients
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And will be interesting to see how this changes as AI translators improve over time.
It definitely depends on the translator, for example translations of the Discworld series translate as many jokes as they can, often replacing them if they don’t quite work. But some of the newer translations don’t do a very good job at preserving the spirit of it.
I used to have a German gf and we both had read a bit of Herman Hesse, she said there were things that didn’t translate completely into English, as well as you had to understand the dynamics of German life to completely understand. As far as translators go that’s a good question, A while ago I searched around a bit to find a consensus on the best translation of a certain book that I can’t remember what it was now haha (might have been Brother’s Karamazov) but you certainly get differing opinions even among scholars… I vaguely recall an article about Murakami translations as well, you may be able to find it on Google, something about having to edit the book because what was terse in Japanese would take 3-pages to explain in English, something like that…
Sometimes, translators can’t even translate informal sentences.
I definitely think it depends on the translator, although I say this as someone who only speaks English. I have bilingual friends who say that certain languages have more flexibility for authors to write in their own ‘voice’, but I don’t know how true this is!
Probably. Different languages have the ability to transmit different ideas. No translation will be perfect but some will most likely be better at conveying the original meaning than others.