The objective of a translator should be to retain the spirit of the original, and have the translated piece stand on its own two feet as a work of literature. This is why Ezra Pound and Christopher Logue were such good translators.
Pound translated into English the Analects of Confucius, a bunch of Noh Plays, and many other works of Chinese and Japanese literature. But he was barely capable of reading Chinese or Japanese at all. He was provided with rough word-for-word translations by friends like Ernest Fenollosa, and he translated those into literature.
Logue didn't know any Ancient Greek, but his rendition of a part of the Iliad is probably the greatest achievement of late 20th century poetry. He simply re-worked the (many) existing English translations into something more lyrical and contemporary. In effect, he reinterpreted the existing body of translations -- and, in his own way, heightened their effect, and captured much of the spirit of the original.
I find that most translations -- especially of poetry -- tend to be altogether too mechanical. Pound and Logue had it figured out.
> The objective of a translator should be to retain the spirit of the original, and have the translated piece stand on its own two feet as a work of literature.
If I want to read inspired Ezra Pound or Christopher Logue, that's the way. If I want to read Confucius, I get a lot of Ezra Pound mixed in, and in a way that is impossible for me to distinguish one from the other. The same goes for wanting to read Homer and getting a lot of Logue.
(For Confucius, Arthur Waley was both leading translator and poet, and Waley's translations are highly recommended for their knowledge of the original and their English poetry.)
1) contract/legal/diplomatic translation: capture the meaning as exact as possible, even if that means the translation is boring and double, or even ten times the length of the original.
2) literary translation: translate to keep things interesting and engaging. EVEN where that means changing the meaning, order, ... of things. Making some changes to accomplish that can be acceptable, for example changing the behavior of a polite character or a policeman or a person of authority to match expected behavior for those kinds of people in the target country. Matching the structure of the original text is just not a concern at all.
The translation itself should be a literary work. Obviously not separate from the original, but not 100% the same either. 95% the same, with the remaining 5% providing maximum "flavor".
3) educational translation: depending on the level of the reader, evolve from literal translation, even putting the words in the wrong order for the target language just to match the original text as closely as possible, or leaving some words untranslated. Slowly evolve towards more "interesting" translation. In any case keep the structure, sequence and word use of the original text 100%.
4) conversational translation: translate as quickly as possible, for example not waiting for complete sentences to start translating. Try to get feedback going between both speaker and listener, as the purpose is having them communicate, not having exact translation, or interesting translation. Just translate 5 words at a time, even when they don't form complete sentences.
Once or twice I have 'translated translations' of Chinese movie subtitles. The basic translation done by a Chinese native who speaks Engkish, with my contribution being to bash the English into shape. I do this in discusiion with the director. I wish more subtitles were done in this way. Rubbish subtitles are endemic in the industry.
I encountered this with Hero, when the single giant calligraphy character that is critical to the film had a different subtitle in the cinema and on the DVD. One of these days I'd love to read a deep dive into how that aspect of the film is understood by native speakers. Which I suspect might be longer than the film itself, dealing as it does with the politics of Chinese unity.
I see that in other places too. I fear it reduces the films to the level of camp. Do the directors not think it matters? Do they not have easy access to fluent speakers of English?
Nah. If you want to write an original work of literature, write an original work of literature. If you're writing a translation, it should reflect the original, good and bad, and you absolutely need to understand the original language to do that.
There is no perfect translation. Different translations have different aims and that's ok. I love Anne Carson's translations of Sappho but I always give the caveat that she takes a lot of liberties with Sappho when I recommend it to a friend. Having a more literal, dry, translation is fine too.
I stumbled upon War Music after discarding (almost) every other translation of the Iliad because the translators cleary didn't get it. Sure, they could talk about Homeric epithets for days and knowingly reference the "wine dark sea," but the actual ethic and humanity of the Iliad eluded them. And when you do get those aspects (as Logue did), the actual choice of idiom by the translator becomes irrelevant, whereas if you don't get them, no matter how "technically accurate" the idiom is, it's just farcical. To my mind, these ersatz translations become the Homeric equivalent of English as She Is Spoke.
> I stumbled upon War Music after discarding (almost) every other translation of the Iliad because the translators cleary didn't get it
Homer's world is very alien to ours. I realized at one point, reading the Odyssey, that it is myself who didn't get it. There was a chasm between me and Homer, and if I wanted read and understand Homer in a meaningful way, I was going to have to cross it.
Unless I have personal expertise, how can I evaluate who 'gets it', Logue or others?
As someone who can read Ancient Greek, Homer is unlike anything we have in English. No translation can "get it." It's oral poetry meant to be performed for hours at a time with a bunch of repetitive stock phrases. I don't feel like I "get it" reading it in Greek. It's absolutely beautiful but even when I read it in Greek, I feel like there's this huge gulf between me and the context it which it was created. I think you should just choose whatever translation you find beautiful but there's also value if someone wants to read something that's worded more closely to the Greek.
I had wondered why Pound went fascist when he seemed so open at the start of his career, doing all these translations. Although I couldn't find "the gentleman who wrote a 'translation' by avoiding the work of translating" in Dorothy Thompson's party game in Harper's, it does seem to explain it nicely.
This is why there are SO many translations of the Tao Te Ching. Some are very mechanical, others miss the point entirely. And then there are those one where it is almost like Poetry, they went beyond just the immediately presented content.
To that I would recommend the translation of it by Red Pine (Bill Porter), not only is is a wonderful translation but it does so much to add additional context via others commentary on the chapters through out the ages.
I'm quite proficient in German and English, but still translating is astonishing hard, even into my mother tongue Spanish. The translation always sounds weird. I'm always in awe at great translations.
When I read translated texts (or watch dubbed films) I always catch false friends or awkward translations, and I "see" the original through the translation like it was a leaky abstraction. It's so tricky even the pros make a lot of mistakes.
This is why I no longer watch dubbed movies, especially because those translations often try to mimick the mouth movements rather than the actual meaning.
In Italy a “pepperoni” pizza is translated as “pizza ai peperoni”, which is “bell pepper pizza”
I feel that I am very sensitive to "translations sounding like translations". A feeling of "that isn't quite how a native person would say that, but I can't really identify what's wrong". My mother tongue is Dutch, and the strange thing is that with the strong influence of the English language, even a lot of content written in Dutch today sounds like it was translated from English. I find it really hard to explain it clearly though. Does anyone else feel the same and maybe knows what causes it?
'translationese' is a pretty common term for it. when you translate, it's really easy to mirror the source structure/syntax even when there's more idiomatic ways to say it in the target language.
Exactly. One simple example that I see all the time comes to mind:
In English, "dozens of ____s" is a very common expression, particularly in news articles. In my local language, even though we do have a word for "dozen", it's much more common to say that in the form of "tens of ____s". Most of the "dozens of ____s" I see written in my language are from news articles that were (badly) translated from English.
I'm a non-native Dutch speaker and even I catch it, a sentence that looks like a 1-on-1 translation from English and than I have to think, no, this can't be proper Dutch.
Exectly the same thing happens to my native language. What causes it? I guess the overwhelming viewership of English spoken to control, so people actually start thinking in English, and translate their thoughts badly when they need to express themselves in their native languages.
Universal grammar theorists freak out whenever this is said, but I think that's because those translated sentences and possibly even logic beneath it just aren't valid in that language and culture, in your case Dutch. Else everything should perfectly translate between any arbitrary languages without adding unnatural or uncomfortable components.
To me a great translation should have Translator Notes (TN) and not be afraid of using neologisms. It seems TNs used to be more common but are increasingly rare.
All according to *keikaku*
(TN: keikaku means plan)
This meme comes from the overuse of TNs in anime fansubs to explain obvious things, things that did not need explaining, or where there would be a perfectly straightforward English word that would do the job.
Neologisms: do you mean neologism in the source language or the target language? This usually happens in the other direction, where the English words for things get copied straight over to other languages to refer to new items. There must be examples in the other direction but I can't immediately think of one.
I dislike translation notes. Translations are already a form of notes, so appending notes to notes is just bad form.
Some translations can be so awkward or simply impossible that leaving a translation note becomes inevitable, but a good translator should not have to need them everywhere.
I would be interested to know what you think about translating word plays.
One example. In LOTR there is a hobbit named Meriadoc, but his friends call him Merry, which is a shorthand for his name but also carries meaning. In one translation into my language, the translator opted to translate Merry into "Srečko", which is close in meaning. The connection to the original name is lost and the translator put that in the translation notes to explain that there is a connection. The rest of the book(s) then always use the semantic meaning. I found that solution to be great for the given problem.
Later translations didn't opt for that, instead keeping the shorthand, which would be just "Meri", which is a nice shorthand but completely drops the semantic meaning.
A good translation is one where the "good" in the original comes through. That might be a concept, a story, or even the rhythm of the words. Great books especially have _many_ good things that a translation needs to handle. Translation is hard because sometimes translating a "feel" might come at a loss of the clarity needed to express an idea.
I like what Emerson said about it in "Books"
> What is really best in any book is translatable, – any real insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, I observe that, in our Bible, and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems easy and inevitable to render the rhythm and music of the original into phrases of equal melody.
To answer what is a great translation, we first need to ask to whom it should be great.
The readers? The only thing that makes a translation great for them is whether the translated text reads well. Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care, that's why they are reading a translation!
The publishers or whoever hired the translator(s)? The most important thing for them is speed of translation, how many words per minute. Accuracy and reading well are secondary to speed. Time is money.
The translators themselves? Depending on whether these are amateurs translating out of passion or professionals translating for a living, what makes a translation great is going to be either accuracy or speed (time is money!) respectively.
Personally, speaking as a Japanese-American who has done amateur translations (anime fansubs) at one point, being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality, and if you're translating for someone for hire there are usually more pressing concerns over quality.[1]
>Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care
As a professional translator, I cherish those readers. They have the good sense to trust me to do the technical part (understanding the original) and only criticize the artistic part (producing a beautiful derivative work).
The worst readers are the ones who have some knowledge of the source language, and rush to nitpick the technical decisions without considering the artistic ones. They are the literary equivalent of those "fans" who will watch a stunning film adaptation and then go home to complain about the colour of Gandalf's shoes or the width of a sand worm's molars. Ultimately, readers of this type are all ego, more concerned about being right than about whether the work is good.
The very best readers, of course, are knowledgeable in both languages and understand that "equivalence" goes far beyond what is written in the dictionary. But as you say, they don't need the translation!
> The readers? The only thing that makes a translation great for them is whether the translated text reads well. Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care, that's why they are reading a translation!
On the contrary, readers generally read a translation because they want to read a specific work, and/or experience the culture it's part of, but can't or won't spend what it would take to become fluent in the language themselves. If they just wanted to read something that reads well they wouldn't be reading a translation. So accuracy is something they care deeply about, even - especially - if they're poorly qualified to assess it.
> being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality
Well, yes. It's like sound design, or colour grading, or stage magic; when you do it right, the audience doesn't notice that you've done anything at all. It certainly takes a certain mentality to thrive in.
> Personally, speaking as a Japanese-American who has done amateur translations (anime fansubs) at one point, being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality
I'm surprised that you feel that way, because I've always associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not always correctly, but always strongly) about the translations. Hence the fansubs in the first place. It's only really a thing for anime in the first place; there aren't many people fan-translating Spanish telenovellas or Kdramas into English, for example.
> Accuracy and reading well are secondary to speed. Time is money.
Looks like AI will accelerate this tendency. We'll get more, cheaper, but worse, translations. Which I see as a qualified good, since it means more amateur and "long tail" from other languages can make it to the English Internet.
>I've always associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not always correctly, but always strongly) about the translations.
As I came to find, most watchers simply couldn't care. How could they? They don't know Japanese! They certainly appreciated anime, but they couldn't appreciate translating and I won't blame them for not appreciating what they don't know.
Of those who did care, though, most of them judged translations for all the wrong reasons and usually without realizing. Kind of a similar vein to how most ham radio guys know enough electricity to be dangerous but not enough to be useful.
All in all I found the work was ultimately a thankless one and I burned out real bad after serving as a translator for a couple animes.
But the fansub group I was with were a great bunch, and the flame wars I had with other translators in other fansub groups were awesome. Flame wars between passionate people who know what they're talking about are a sight to behold.
from my experience doing animanga-adjacent translations - readers also prioritize speed first, quality second. there are a lot of people who will happily read machine-translated work (and often awkward, typo-ridden MTL at that) rather than wait a day or two for better translations. same goes for general scanlation quality, like typesetting and redraws.
this is also why the fansubbing scene is effectively dead - companies like crunchyroll get episode scripts early and can thus release subs simultaneously with the official release. most fansub groups now just fix/edit the crunchyroll script, if they even pick up series at all. there's no point in putting in the effort if no one's going to look at it, after all.
that's the main issue i have with 'more but worse' translations, honestly. you'll get more material, but the good translators won't just move to content that wasn't translated before - they'll just disappear entirely.
The translations in anime at least are unlikely to actually be worse, since a lot of the English anime translation industry are obsessed with inserting woke politics and cringey zoomer jokes into their translations and more or less hate the people who buy their products. There's a reason a lot of people are laughing at the activist translators losing their jobs to AI.
In areas where the translators are actual, responsible professionals, the quality will suffer.
Yes. I rather liked "The War Nerd Iliad" by John Dolan ("War Nerd" is a moniker that Dolan used in a column he used to write). It's basically a version of the Iliad that eschews the poetry and tells the story in a straightforward fashion. It's actually quite moving in a way.
Is there even such a thing as "English hexameters"? From what I remember from high school hexameter is based on the feature of the Greek language having both "short" and "long" vowels, which is then used to create a particular rhythm. My mother's tongue does not have such feature which makes it impossible to make real hexameters in it. Translations do not even try to imitate it.
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Pound translated into English the Analects of Confucius, a bunch of Noh Plays, and many other works of Chinese and Japanese literature. But he was barely capable of reading Chinese or Japanese at all. He was provided with rough word-for-word translations by friends like Ernest Fenollosa, and he translated those into literature.
Logue didn't know any Ancient Greek, but his rendition of a part of the Iliad is probably the greatest achievement of late 20th century poetry. He simply re-worked the (many) existing English translations into something more lyrical and contemporary. In effect, he reinterpreted the existing body of translations -- and, in his own way, heightened their effect, and captured much of the spirit of the original.
I find that most translations -- especially of poetry -- tend to be altogether too mechanical. Pound and Logue had it figured out.
If I want to read inspired Ezra Pound or Christopher Logue, that's the way. If I want to read Confucius, I get a lot of Ezra Pound mixed in, and in a way that is impossible for me to distinguish one from the other. The same goes for wanting to read Homer and getting a lot of Logue.
(For Confucius, Arthur Waley was both leading translator and poet, and Waley's translations are highly recommended for their knowledge of the original and their English poetry.)
1) contract/legal/diplomatic translation: capture the meaning as exact as possible, even if that means the translation is boring and double, or even ten times the length of the original.
2) literary translation: translate to keep things interesting and engaging. EVEN where that means changing the meaning, order, ... of things. Making some changes to accomplish that can be acceptable, for example changing the behavior of a polite character or a policeman or a person of authority to match expected behavior for those kinds of people in the target country. Matching the structure of the original text is just not a concern at all.
The translation itself should be a literary work. Obviously not separate from the original, but not 100% the same either. 95% the same, with the remaining 5% providing maximum "flavor".
3) educational translation: depending on the level of the reader, evolve from literal translation, even putting the words in the wrong order for the target language just to match the original text as closely as possible, or leaving some words untranslated. Slowly evolve towards more "interesting" translation. In any case keep the structure, sequence and word use of the original text 100%.
4) conversational translation: translate as quickly as possible, for example not waiting for complete sentences to start translating. Try to get feedback going between both speaker and listener, as the purpose is having them communicate, not having exact translation, or interesting translation. Just translate 5 words at a time, even when they don't form complete sentences.
Homer's world is very alien to ours. I realized at one point, reading the Odyssey, that it is myself who didn't get it. There was a chasm between me and Homer, and if I wanted read and understand Homer in a meaningful way, I was going to have to cross it.
Unless I have personal expertise, how can I evaluate who 'gets it', Logue or others?
To that I would recommend the translation of it by Red Pine (Bill Porter), not only is is a wonderful translation but it does so much to add additional context via others commentary on the chapters through out the ages.
When I read translated texts (or watch dubbed films) I always catch false friends or awkward translations, and I "see" the original through the translation like it was a leaky abstraction. It's so tricky even the pros make a lot of mistakes.
In Italy a “pepperoni” pizza is translated as “pizza ai peperoni”, which is “bell pepper pizza”
In English, "dozens of ____s" is a very common expression, particularly in news articles. In my local language, even though we do have a word for "dozen", it's much more common to say that in the form of "tens of ____s". Most of the "dozens of ____s" I see written in my language are from news articles that were (badly) translated from English.
Exectly the same thing happens to my native language. What causes it? I guess the overwhelming viewership of English spoken to control, so people actually start thinking in English, and translate their thoughts badly when they need to express themselves in their native languages.
Neologisms: do you mean neologism in the source language or the target language? This usually happens in the other direction, where the English words for things get copied straight over to other languages to refer to new items. There must be examples in the other direction but I can't immediately think of one.
I dislike translation notes. Translations are already a form of notes, so appending notes to notes is just bad form.
Some translations can be so awkward or simply impossible that leaving a translation note becomes inevitable, but a good translator should not have to need them everywhere.
One example. In LOTR there is a hobbit named Meriadoc, but his friends call him Merry, which is a shorthand for his name but also carries meaning. In one translation into my language, the translator opted to translate Merry into "Srečko", which is close in meaning. The connection to the original name is lost and the translator put that in the translation notes to explain that there is a connection. The rest of the book(s) then always use the semantic meaning. I found that solution to be great for the given problem.
Later translations didn't opt for that, instead keeping the shorthand, which would be just "Meri", which is a nice shorthand but completely drops the semantic meaning.
A good translation is one where the "good" in the original comes through. That might be a concept, a story, or even the rhythm of the words. Great books especially have _many_ good things that a translation needs to handle. Translation is hard because sometimes translating a "feel" might come at a loss of the clarity needed to express an idea.
I like what Emerson said about it in "Books"
> What is really best in any book is translatable, – any real insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, I observe that, in our Bible, and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems easy and inevitable to render the rhythm and music of the original into phrases of equal melody.
The readers? The only thing that makes a translation great for them is whether the translated text reads well. Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care, that's why they are reading a translation!
The publishers or whoever hired the translator(s)? The most important thing for them is speed of translation, how many words per minute. Accuracy and reading well are secondary to speed. Time is money.
The translators themselves? Depending on whether these are amateurs translating out of passion or professionals translating for a living, what makes a translation great is going to be either accuracy or speed (time is money!) respectively.
Personally, speaking as a Japanese-American who has done amateur translations (anime fansubs) at one point, being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality, and if you're translating for someone for hire there are usually more pressing concerns over quality.[1]
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/grandorder/comments/dnpzrh/everyone...
As a professional translator, I cherish those readers. They have the good sense to trust me to do the technical part (understanding the original) and only criticize the artistic part (producing a beautiful derivative work).
The worst readers are the ones who have some knowledge of the source language, and rush to nitpick the technical decisions without considering the artistic ones. They are the literary equivalent of those "fans" who will watch a stunning film adaptation and then go home to complain about the colour of Gandalf's shoes or the width of a sand worm's molars. Ultimately, readers of this type are all ego, more concerned about being right than about whether the work is good.
The very best readers, of course, are knowledgeable in both languages and understand that "equivalence" goes far beyond what is written in the dictionary. But as you say, they don't need the translation!
On the contrary, readers generally read a translation because they want to read a specific work, and/or experience the culture it's part of, but can't or won't spend what it would take to become fluent in the language themselves. If they just wanted to read something that reads well they wouldn't be reading a translation. So accuracy is something they care deeply about, even - especially - if they're poorly qualified to assess it.
> being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality
Well, yes. It's like sound design, or colour grading, or stage magic; when you do it right, the audience doesn't notice that you've done anything at all. It certainly takes a certain mentality to thrive in.
I'm surprised that you feel that way, because I've always associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not always correctly, but always strongly) about the translations. Hence the fansubs in the first place. It's only really a thing for anime in the first place; there aren't many people fan-translating Spanish telenovellas or Kdramas into English, for example.
> Accuracy and reading well are secondary to speed. Time is money.
Looks like AI will accelerate this tendency. We'll get more, cheaper, but worse, translations. Which I see as a qualified good, since it means more amateur and "long tail" from other languages can make it to the English Internet.
As I came to find, most watchers simply couldn't care. How could they? They don't know Japanese! They certainly appreciated anime, but they couldn't appreciate translating and I won't blame them for not appreciating what they don't know.
Of those who did care, though, most of them judged translations for all the wrong reasons and usually without realizing. Kind of a similar vein to how most ham radio guys know enough electricity to be dangerous but not enough to be useful.
All in all I found the work was ultimately a thankless one and I burned out real bad after serving as a translator for a couple animes.
But the fansub group I was with were a great bunch, and the flame wars I had with other translators in other fansub groups were awesome. Flame wars between passionate people who know what they're talking about are a sight to behold.
this is also why the fansubbing scene is effectively dead - companies like crunchyroll get episode scripts early and can thus release subs simultaneously with the official release. most fansub groups now just fix/edit the crunchyroll script, if they even pick up series at all. there's no point in putting in the effort if no one's going to look at it, after all.
that's the main issue i have with 'more but worse' translations, honestly. you'll get more material, but the good translators won't just move to content that wasn't translated before - they'll just disappear entirely.
In areas where the translators are actual, responsible professionals, the quality will suffer.
So much this. For example I think a lot of people would actually enjoy Iliad and Odyssey more if their first experience weren't in dactylic hexameter.
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