It's fascinating to hear about the translation difficulties; I really hope you find a way to resolve them, as its super interesting to hear about your character.
I wouldn't stress about it too much. Perfect translation is impossible.There will always ben things lost in translation. For example, one of my favorite authors is Mika Waltari who is Finnish, and when I first read 'Sinhué' I noticed a few expressions were transliterated from English, not even Finnish. Even between Romance/Latin languages things are impossible to really translate since, how in Spanish (like Russian) we have gendered nouns, so even that little aspect dilutes text. And then there's little cultural connotations words might have that you just won't be aware of unless you're a native speaker. And in Anime/Manga things get worse because of how different language works. For example, there's a Japanese game called shiritori where people say words and you have to say another word with the last syllable of the word just said, and as you can imagine it is impossible to translate word games like that perfectly. And then there are miscellaneous things like the reason most villains have a number 4 tattoo is because of how 4 in Japanese sounds like the word 'death', another thing usually completely lost in translation.
Fun fact, there's an Italian saying "Traduttore, traditore" that converts to "The translator's a traitor" because of the implicit inescapable imprecision that come with translating things.
I have the english translation of a beautiful russian book, but it feels to me the translation fails at almost every moment to convey the beauty of the writing in Russian. My russian is not good enough to check however. Would be interesting to compare together with you.
@@Akopovaks Письмовник по-русски и The Light and the Dark in English. Can point to some paragraphs that are particularly weird in the English translation.
Hi, I am also learning English and I was thinking about translation, if you translate not the language but the way of thinking... it will be a more understandable task. Maybe you can't translate some meaning not only because the languages are different, but the languages are different because we have different cultural models. And the language just reflects this. +++ But what is common? I think for a fiction book it's basic human emotions, and I think to open these emotions to people from another country, you might need to write another book... a joke, but anyway it's close to the truth +++
@@AlexandrGakhov Yeah, that’s actually what I planned to do. I agree that a good translation is more about those feelings that a reader could experience while reading, but the humour is such a big part, the style of writing is something that makes you to be a writer and characters are those main instruments that are making your book so interesting. That is a dilemma for me. I’ve met the case where it doesn’t work well. Also, my example about the anecdote of Knyaz Ippolit in War and Pease is a proof that you just can’t do both clean translation and retain the humour. That’s sad. And in translation the whole thing should be determined with author’s view on what is more important in the book and emphasis on it. Though, not each author knows the language on which he/she wants to translate the book, as I can’t translate it into French for example. So it is usually put on translator’s shoulders. This whole thing is pretty interesting. I remember I’ve seen a university investigation about translations of Nabokov’s works and there were some translations compared, I’ll try to find the link. It is in Russian, but pretty interesting to read
So inspirational topic. I think there are a lot of treasure here... If i change point of view a little.. As a hobby i learn game design. Here is a term called the player experience. When u create game u goal is player is taken this experience. U can't do it directly and graphics, styles, stroy, animations, is a tools to generate the expirience inside the player mind. if we back to the language and it's contructions i think some Art can't be done on defferent language (wile AI will invent universal language) and if in your art the boarder between form and meaning is melting. And here i can back to the expirince if in translation we will transalate it here the translation can' be even better than original and translation is form of art here too.Very insperation topic
By the way, I was thinking that the only way to try to overcome those troubles of transition is to make a movie, where actors could represent those aspects of my book (not fully anyway) using their art of performance. It would partially be more understandable, but at the same time in movies you can’t present absolutely everything that you say in the book, so a lot will be omitted again. It is such a conundrum this whole thing. I should probably focus on the quality of the original book and will return with full attention to the translation part.
any media have it's own language. and video is hole new world). Here u will find much more untrivial questions. maybe if u want find more universal language u can look to the some visual narative like comics, and so on. if it is match to u I think best for author make the artifact and other artists will see on it from there sides. here is tow parts: - tools (style, media, language) main question is How ? - goals (exp, ideas, emotions) What i want to archve ?
It's fascinating to hear about the translation difficulties; I really hope you find a way to resolve them, as its super interesting to hear about your character.
I wouldn't stress about it too much. Perfect translation is impossible.There will always ben things lost in translation. For example, one of my favorite authors is Mika Waltari who is Finnish, and when I first read 'Sinhué' I noticed a few expressions were transliterated from English, not even Finnish.
Even between Romance/Latin languages things are impossible to really translate since, how in Spanish (like Russian) we have gendered nouns, so even that little aspect dilutes text. And then there's little cultural connotations words might have that you just won't be aware of unless you're a native speaker.
And in Anime/Manga things get worse because of how different language works. For example, there's a Japanese game called shiritori where people say words and you have to say another word with the last syllable of the word just said, and as you can imagine it is impossible to translate word games like that perfectly. And then there are miscellaneous things like the reason most villains have a number 4 tattoo is because of how 4 in Japanese sounds like the word 'death', another thing usually completely lost in translation.
@@AndresGomez-ct7qb yesss! It loses so much… I start to understand people who want to know Ancient Greek to read Plato 😅
All work of fyodor dostoevsky has been translated to english
I forgot about that(
Fun fact, there's an Italian saying "Traduttore, traditore" that converts to "The translator's a traitor" because of the implicit inescapable imprecision that come with translating things.
By the way this saying is translatable and understandable😁
I have the english translation of a beautiful russian book, but it feels to me the translation fails at almost every moment to convey the beauty of the writing in Russian. My russian is not good enough to check however. Would be interesting to compare together with you.
What is the book?
@@Akopovaks Письмовник по-русски и The Light and the Dark in English. Can point to some paragraphs that are particularly weird in the English translation.
Can you write me on e-mail? I’m curious) daizyisumi@gmail.com
Hi, I am also learning English and I was thinking about translation, if you translate not the language but the way of thinking... it will be a more understandable task.
Maybe you can't translate some meaning not only because the languages are different, but the languages are different because we have different cultural models. And the language just reflects this.
+++
But what is common? I think for a fiction book it's basic human emotions, and I think to open these emotions to people from another country, you might need to write another book... a joke, but anyway it's close to the truth
+++
@@AlexandrGakhov Yeah, that’s actually what I planned to do. I agree that a good translation is more about those feelings that a reader could experience while reading, but the humour is such a big part, the style of writing is something that makes you to be a writer and characters are those main instruments that are making your book so interesting. That is a dilemma for me. I’ve met the case where it doesn’t work well.
Also, my example about the anecdote of Knyaz Ippolit in War and Pease is a proof that you just can’t do both clean translation and retain the humour. That’s sad. And in translation the whole thing should be determined with author’s view on what is more important in the book and emphasis on it. Though, not each author knows the language on which he/she wants to translate the book, as I can’t translate it into French for example. So it is usually put on translator’s shoulders. This whole thing is pretty interesting. I remember I’ve seen a university investigation about translations of Nabokov’s works and there were some translations compared, I’ll try to find the link. It is in Russian, but pretty interesting to read
So inspirational topic. I think there are a lot of treasure here... If i change point of view a little.. As a hobby i learn game design. Here is a term called the player experience. When u create game u goal is player is taken this experience. U can't do it directly and graphics, styles, stroy, animations, is a tools to generate the expirience inside the player mind.
if we back to the language and it's contructions i think some Art can't be done on defferent language (wile AI will invent universal language) and if in your art the boarder between form and meaning is melting. And here i can back to the expirince if in translation we will transalate it here the translation can' be even better than original and translation is form of art here too.Very insperation topic
gorky.media/context/annotatsii-k-perevodam-rebekka-dafny-dyumore/
I found only this, but also quite interesting
By the way, I was thinking that the only way to try to overcome those troubles of transition is to make a movie, where actors could represent those aspects of my book (not fully anyway) using their art of performance. It would partially be more understandable, but at the same time in movies you can’t present absolutely everything that you say in the book, so a lot will be omitted again. It is such a conundrum this whole thing. I should probably focus on the quality of the original book and will return with full attention to the translation part.
any media have it's own language. and video is hole new world). Here u will find much more untrivial questions.
maybe if u want find more universal language u can look to the some visual narative like comics, and so on. if it is match to u
I think best for author make the artifact and other artists will see on it from there sides.
here is tow parts:
- tools (style, media, language) main question is How ?
- goals (exp, ideas, emotions) What i want to archve ?