Quote:
Originally Posted by bgalbrecht
You're going to leave us in the dark, and not explain a "saccharin party"?
It doesn't take a translation for a book's nuances to be lost to the average reader, even books written in the reader's native language. Topical references and even an immensely changed world view make it hard, if not impossible for the reader to "get" a novel the way a reader from the author's time would understand it.
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Over lunch I read into a lengthy sample of Boswell's Life of Johnson, in which the editor quotes Johnson's observation that the meanings of the references get lost in about 70 years - i.e., when the last person around at the time the reference has meaning dies, taking into account a sort of half-life of the reference. Sometimes these meanings can be recovered in annotated versions of a book. It also helps to be well read in history, particularly social or literary history.
In the context of translations, what I've found helpful is to read two or more translations of the thing at the same time. But it's tough to sustain the narrative continuity when you read that way. Eventually I settle down to the translation that I enjoy the most...