Booktok 📚 discussion

Hello there...i have a question. (For my English exam)
As person that learn and speak fluently in different languages I'm at a point where I can analyze documents, texts, book in those languages and compare them.

So basically my subject is about "how translation can improve, impact or help the culture globally."

It's easy, I would just like to know what do you think about translated book (movies, texts...anything would do)

-Do you think that translation might communicate the language quality poorly ?
-Is translation considered as the greatest tool to get access to different cultures?
- What about editors cutting off pages during translation? Or change crucial things so the translation could be easier/faster...
- How the quality of translation might impact readers? (Is the quality of the translation able to change people's opinion about the book?)

Feel free to add your ideas about it and share your thoughts...the more diversified the better
Thanks:)

i myself study linguistics and we had a translation course that made me consider your questions.

translation can definitely communicate the language quality poorly. if a translator is incompetent and doesn't know the correct way in which they should approach the source text, the translation will be bad. sometimes it is okay to change some things up, but other times it leads to poorly translated works that lose the original meaning or the author's style. for example, in the latvian translation of harry potter many words are changed, especially the ones with latin roots. there aren't many people who know latin here, especially children, so, to make the spells and names make sense, they latvianized them. "lumos" is changed to "spīžo" - "spīdēt" means "to glow", so it makes sense even if you don't know latin. "Remus Lupin" was changed to "Remuss Vilksons" - "vilks" means "wolf", so, again, it makes sense.

i would say the best way to access a different culture is by learning the language and reading the original work, but, of course, that's an unnecessarily difficult task to read just one book (or just a few books). in my opinion, translation is the greatest tool, there is nothing that can get the message across better. the translation has to be good, though; if it's not, it's not a very great tool at all.

i'd say that cutting off pages and changing crucial things is completely unacceptable. yes, it can be done when editing something like magazines or advertisements, but definitely not when translating books. i think for books you have to be as close to the source text as possible. i can't think of a single case where i would accept removing a page or a crucial element of the story. it's just. no. that's not how you translate books, that's how you ruin them.

the last question we have covered in length during our translation lectures, we've had several long discussions, but, long story short - yes, the quality of a translation can definitely impact readers. for example, if the source text is really poetic and has many allusions to other literary works, but the translator chooses to use simple language and ignore the allusions, the finished product won't be as good as the source material. all the intricacy is lost, the finished product is plain and simple, and it might put the readers off. they might never know how good the original work is because they have lost all interest due to a bad translation. and it doesn't have to be a really poor translation, changing just a couple of words can transform the whole work. words have connotations, and using the wrong synonym can give a completely different meaning to the whole sentence. readers might dislike certain characters if the words describing them are chosen poorly. a character might be described as "bad" in the source text, but a translator might spin it differently and change the word to "cruel", "despicable" or "horrible", which gives of a completely different meaning, making the character less likeable than they were in the original text.

actually, this discussion could be even longer, considering that not only translators are to blame, but also the editors, who don't change bad translations and change good ones, and the commissioners, who accept half-assed translations just to print them as quickly as possible.

but anyways, this was a whole essay oops, i hope some of this helped

about the harry potter example - that was a good example of how a translation should be done, to prove the point that sometimes you have to change some things. if they didn't change the names and the spells, then i would call that a poor translation because the words would lose their meaning, kids wouldn't understand why "lumos" is a spell that gives light etc.

I originally speak english though I do most of my reading in french, and most of the time the books are a bit longer bc there are more words. In general though, depending on your language level, you can understand the equivalent of an expression in the language you're reading in. Translating does sometimes take some interesting parts out of a book (bc you can't say certain things in every language), but I wouldn't say crucial; it just won't be the same though bc the writing style does change.

thank you...It's nice to have an opinion of a professional. when i talk about it with my classmates sometimes they can't even understand why i bother (just happened yesterday hahah) but it's important to me...i was born in russia then mouved to france and i study english and spanish. and for example even if i read a book written by a spanish author my reflex would be to think "hey someday I'll have to read this in spanish"
It's easier with books in english i just pick them in english in the first place rather than reading them in french. and it started when i found an article where someone analyzed Thorne of glass in french and english side by side and marked the differences (that's where the cutting pages example came from) and even better there is a nouvella in the series which is reaaaally important to the story...well, the Assassin's blade is non existent in french.
so how could readers possibly really be into the rest of the series when A WHOLE BOOK is missing?
and another example that made me doubt everything about translated books is the french translation of Poushkin's poems...he is the most popular writer/poet in russian and his style is known by everyone. But when i had the chance to read it in franch it wasn't even translated with the right form, it was in verses in russian and in franch it was in prose without any line constructions. and i don't even talk about rhymes. so is the translation pointless here? (with separated poems that don't tell any stories )

that thing about throne of glass makes my blood boil, how can they just.... skip pages or a whole book? terrible translation work, in my opinion. glad i haven't come into to contact with such terrible translations.

the pushkin example makes me think of another example - we had to read dante's divine comedy for literature classes at uni and two quite different translations were provided. the original work is in italian, it's a narrative poem, and it follows a specific rhyme and rhythm scheme. in the first translation that was provided, the rhythm and the rhyme scheme were the same as in the original poem, but it made the poem hard to read because english sentence structure is different from italian sentence structure - the translated sentences sounded awkward. the other translation was prose: no verses, no rhythm, no rhymes. but the second one was much easier to understand. so, in my opinion, if you just want to know the plot of a narrative poem, if you're not concerned with the style of the original work, then it's okay to read a translation that has been turned into prose. but, of course, most poetry is not narrative poetry, usually the plot of a poem is not that important; what matters is the style, the sentence structure, the rhymes, the rhythm. for those works, in my opinion, the original structure should be kept. just like with books, a bad translation can make the reader hate the work and they might never know how good the original work is because they read a poor translation of it.

actually, it's interesting, i don't know if it's the same in english, but in latvian we say "atdzejots" for translations of poems and "tulkots" for translations of prose works. they are two completely separate words, two completely separate things because you can't just translate a poem, you have to keep the rhymes, the rhythm, the style too. a person who translates only prose and doesn't have training in writing and translating poetry won't be able to translate a poem successfully.

to answer your question, i don't think this type of translation (turning poetry into prose) is necessarily pointless, but the pushkin case, it seems like it was the wrong approach.

at the end of the day i think that obviously a translation can't be the same as the original version. BUT translator can do a pretty good job. that's when they're not hurried by editors to publish the book the as soon as possible just to sell them (

yes! translations can be done very well, they can be really close to the original, but, sadly, that's often not the case in our capitalist world where money matters more than the quality

an that is sad

yep :(