How much does book lose in the process of translation? How much

>tfw no pet moose

about tree fiddy

>>8633102
I've read a few authors in both portuguese and english. Camoes loses a lot when translated, but I suppose that's to be expected from poetry.

apologies for /pleb/

most people around me who have read ASOIAF have read the Spanish translation and I don't know how they translated it because holy shit those aren't the same books I've read

I'd say 17 based on scholastic processes

How much do they gain?
Can a translation both lose and gain something?

>>8633183
Loss in Poetry>>>Loss in Literature>>>Loss in technical texts.
At best, the translator drops notes about how you can't convey a meaning in a different language, which can break the flow of the text, but you have a better understanding of what the author meant.
At worst, it's completely fucking incomprehensible.

>>8633110
That's a cowe you faggot

>>8633102

with close languages like french-italian-spanish, not so much.

compound words, puns, may be untranslatable,

for example, from Ulysses: "What opera is like a railway line?" The Rose of Castille. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel.

You cant do that in Spanish or French because steel in those languages is acero and acier. The translator will replace the pun with another pun of the language it is being translated to.

in poetry you lose a lot, some languages have shorter or longer words than others, sometimes it is impossible to get the possible translations to rhyme, and another metric may have to be chosen.

it is possible for translations to be very good, or even better than the original, except for poetry, philosophy, and linguistic gimmicks like the works of Joyce. Finnegans Wake is pretty much untranslatable.

>>8633102
Depends on the author, translator and language. Kafka is a good example of someone who loses a lot in translation.

Douglas Hofstadter wrote a wonderful book on literary translation titled 'Le Ton beau de Marot'.

>>8633650
Depends on the quality of the translator. Usually, not that much. Don't believe the "you gotta read the dune bible in arabic" ragheads.

>>8633657
Meant to reply to OP

>>8633657
What does that have to do with Douglas Hofstadter's wonderful book on literary translation titled 'Le Ton beau de Marot'?

>>8633659
>>8633664
Sorry, my bad.

you cant 'lose' something that you could never have got. you simply get something else.

qualitative questions could be asked about that new something, but on the whole what you ask just stems from common-sense confusions that are useful within the use of a single language.

>>8633199
I actually prefer the french version over the original one.
Though the translator changed midway and it completely lost its charm

>>8633664
Is 'Le Ton Beau de Marot' a pun on 'Le Tombeau de Marat', as in the French revolutionary? Sorry for my pleb French.

Poetry loses a lot, I read Farsi (Persian) and I cannot put into words how much is lost when you translate Persian poetry, particularly because form is so essential.

I actually have no idea. I have never read a book in Norwegian and then tried to find the same book translated.

I would guess that it depends on which language the book gets translated to, which language it was originally written in, and how proficient the translator really is in both languages.

I recently read Allan Bloom's version of the Republic of Plato and I loved it for all the footnotes on translation details. A lot of translators just do their best but don't explain that so many words have really strange nuances that you just can't capture, or have obscure contextual meanings we don't really understand anymore.

>>8633110
That's a man next to that pig, not a moose

>tfw pigs could eat us if they wanted to

That's a big pig

>>8633650
Which translation of this is best?

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>>8633368
>Finnegans Wake is pretty much untranslatable
>Implying it already hasn't been translated

Are you people thick enough that you don't think there are actual translators worried about these questions? People with PhDs and post-doctorates working on the area and discussing the best alternatives and tools to translate texts, experimental or otherwise?

Are you also thick enough to think only modern texts are difficult to translate? Jesus christ.

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273KB, 560x700px

>>8635844
I wonder how translators would work on a text like Faerie Queene. I imagine it might even be kind of fun to get to write in a mock-archaic form of one's own language