MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - language and ideas : i have a word for it, therefore it exists ?

carandol · 09-01-2008, 01:38 PM

I remember reading somewhere once that Umberto Eco thinks the translations of his books into English are better than the originals. He always uses the same translator, who he thinks is better at expressing what he means than he himself is.

I think its interesting the way some languages have words for concepts which don't really exist simply in others. For instance there's a word in Welsh, "haeraeth", which more or less means as "a feeling of nostalgia for something which hasn't actually gone yet." As in "Oh woe! Never will I stand upon this balcony and watch this sunset ever again!"

I've never been a translator, but I used to be copy-editor who had to tidy up academic papers which had been written in English by none-native speakers. It was often illuminating to see from sentence structure how their native language must be constructed. And sometimes they used to make me laugh. I remember one academic was talking about how lightly-built houses had been constructed in a certain part of a city, and came up with a wonderful image of "an estate of single-storey lighthouses."

09-01-2008, 01:38 PM	#4
carandol Evangelist Posts: 423 Karma: 2153430 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: BeBook	I remember reading somewhere once that Umberto Eco thinks the translations of his books into English are better than the originals. He always uses the same translator, who he thinks is better at expressing what he means than he himself is. I think its interesting the way some languages have words for concepts which don't really exist simply in others. For instance there's a word in Welsh, "haeraeth", which more or less means as "a feeling of nostalgia for something which hasn't actually gone yet." As in "Oh woe! Never will I stand upon this balcony and watch this sunset ever again!" I've never been a translator, but I used to be copy-editor who had to tidy up academic papers which had been written in English by none-native speakers. It was often illuminating to see from sentence structure how their native language must be constructed. And sometimes they used to make me laugh. I remember one academic was talking about how lightly-built houses had been constructed in a certain part of a city, and came up with a wonderful image of "an estate of single-storey lighthouses."