MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Reading in English as a Non-native Speaker

IorekB · 07-25-2013, 03:09 PM

Well, I think that most of the time, the original should be a bit better than the translation, at least to some degree. I guess that a good translator can succeed fairly well at getting the general meaning across, as well as some of the undertones and details. But I think that there are quite a few challenges difficult to overcome:

Many words have no perfectly exact counterpart in the other language, so some shades of meaning are lost and/or some new connotations not intended by the author are added.
Even if a fairly exact transfer is possible, it may miss the elegance or poignancy of the original formulation, the new construction being possibly longer and more convoluted. Additionally, a German translation of an English book will need some 15% to 30% more letters from the get go, due to the language structure (According to an article where employees at German publishers are quoted).
Dialects are very difficult to get across. Right now, I'm reading some young adult fiction located in Cornwall ("Over Sea, Under Stone", by Susan Cooper). The locals are portrayed speaking with different degrees of dialect, which I scarcely can imagine being easy to translate.
If we're talking big franchises, translations may be rushed for marketing reasons (ok, I hope something like this should be fairly rare...). The Steve Jobs biography seems to be a notorious example for a pretty bad German translation (at least according to many reviewers on amazon, they gave plenty of examples). Many false friends, obviously different translators for different chapters etc.

All that being said, I can fairly well imagine that a well-versed translator may be able to infuse some fresh poetic life into a text originally being a bit dry. Assuming a given book can fascinate by its page-turner qualities rather than by its possibly bland and dull style, a good translation may be able to round off the whole thing stylistically, rendering the whole even better than the original. But I guess for that to happen, many favourable circumstances have to coincide. But maybe I am to pessimistic...

Ah, one example came to my mind, admittedly being slightly off topic, but nevertheless possibly illustrating my last point: "The Persuaders!", TV series with Roger Moore an Tony Curtis, seems to be generally reputed for gaining much by the livelier and wittier dialogue of the German dubbing (The series is known as "Die Zwei" in Germany).

07-25-2013, 03:09 PM	#58
IorekB Member Posts: 15 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Germany Device: Sony PRS-T1, PRS-T3S	Well, I think that most of the time, the original should be a bit better than the translation, at least to some degree. I guess that a good translator can succeed fairly well at getting the general meaning across, as well as some of the undertones and details. But I think that there are quite a few challenges difficult to overcome: Many words have no perfectly exact counterpart in the other language, so some shades of meaning are lost and/or some new connotations not intended by the author are added. Even if a fairly exact transfer is possible, it may miss the elegance or poignancy of the original formulation, the new construction being possibly longer and more convoluted. Additionally, a German translation of an English book will need some 15% to 30% more letters from the get go, due to the language structure (According to an article where employees at German publishers are quoted). Dialects are very difficult to get across. Right now, I'm reading some young adult fiction located in Cornwall ("Over Sea, Under Stone", by Susan Cooper). The locals are portrayed speaking with different degrees of dialect, which I scarcely can imagine being easy to translate. If we're talking big franchises, translations may be rushed for marketing reasons (ok, I hope something like this should be fairly rare...). The Steve Jobs biography seems to be a notorious example for a pretty bad German translation (at least according to many reviewers on amazon, they gave plenty of examples). Many false friends, obviously different translators for different chapters etc. All that being said, I can fairly well imagine that a well-versed translator may be able to infuse some fresh poetic life into a text originally being a bit dry. Assuming a given book can fascinate by its page-turner qualities rather than by its possibly bland and dull style, a good translation may be able to round off the whole thing stylistically, rendering the whole even better than the original. But I guess for that to happen, many favourable circumstances have to coincide. But maybe I am to pessimistic... Ah, one example came to my mind, admittedly being slightly off topic, but nevertheless possibly illustrating my last point: "The Persuaders!", TV series with Roger Moore an Tony Curtis, seems to be generally reputed for gaining much by the livelier and wittier dialogue of the German dubbing (The series is known as "Die Zwei" in Germany).