Quote:
Originally Posted by fum
I find that unfair to the translater. I live in a small country, Denmark, and there is only 5-6 million native speakers. A lot of what i read, is translated. And many do a very good job in translating. You can, off course, come with examples of poorly translated novels, but they are few.
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How is that unfair? Of course, a bad translation will completely ruin things. I didn't even think about bad translations. From what I have seen, the English translations of Handke are very good. At this moment, unable to convey the difficulties with my own words, I would borrow a translator's words.
From:
http://goaliesanxiety.blogspot.com/2...novel.html?m=1 (bold mine)
Quote:
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The repetitive rhythm of the first three sentences, each with a phrase between commas after the stated subject, begs to finds its way into a translation. In German, the third sentence's verb begins with "wird erzittert" which could mean that the house is shaken. The final part of the verb (haben) doesn't come until the end of the sentence, so not till that point does a reader realize that the tense is future perfect instead of present. That tension, which I can't reproduce in English, draws attention to the fact of narration.
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What Peter Handke writes is modern German, current spelling, correct grammar, regular word order. And yet you will be hard pressed to find anyone talking like that. He is pushing the language to the limit. And sometimes it is no longer translatable as the limits are different between languages.