/lit/ - Literature

>>14010290
That's a long post just for restating a tired old meme.
Let me post a counterargument without reading your spergfest: translations allow you to read partial versions of books you would have zero contact with if it weren't for translations. So they're a net positive in the overall life of literature.

The only reason you would refuse to read translations is if you where foolish enough to think you can learn and master all languages that are important in literature, but surely you wouldn't indulge in such a ridiculous LARP, OP?

>dont read bible
>dont read tolstoy
>dont read proust
>dont read dante

OP you are a pleb

>>14010310
To add on the LARPing count: it's delusional to think you can "fully capture" a text by reading it when it was written by a person and in a context that is long gone. You will never read the Illiad the way an Ancient Greek or even a Roman would have read it, not if you spend 50 years studying Ancient Greek. Accept this reality and grow up.

>>14010290
we live in capitalism you idiot, being against translation is fucking unproductive. who will be impressed by you cause you read original by some greek homo

also some translations are better than originals even according to the author (i.e. Borges preferred english to spanish). translators usually spend their entire lives studying the author to even get paid for their 'shitty' translation. of course, i would prefer that all translations be interlinear but those are too slow to read

also your shitty knowledge of the language is on the same level as watching camrip of a film of indonesia instead of remake made in hollywood by people who probably know the language natively and already understand the impact

translation is complex and is full of strategies for each possible case. read on foreignisation, domestication for example. remember that if you have 'learned' the language or even worse tried to read the book with small knowledge of language you domesticate whatever you read as you have no knowledge of translation theory anyways.

t. professional translator being fuckin drunk (mainly translated technical texts, but also helped in some bigger literary translation tho literary translators are the craziest fucks ever)

>>14010290
Translation is just another version of a possible text. If you want to know that a text is worth anything then you must translate it. If it survives translation then it can survive anything. And Literature is more than mere words.

>>14010318
>Doesn't read Dante in its original tuscan dialect
>Calls other people pleb

>>14010340
>doesn't move back in time to have dante read by dante to him in the exact accent he wanted
>doesn't become dante himself to realize the actual meaning of work

fucking third dimension plebs, i can't fucking stay you

>>14010290

I agree with this profoundly

t. russian who came to portugal at the age of 4 and has read great russian/english/portuguese works in their native language and the translations

>>14010290
>as if we can ever perfectly understand what an author thought
>as if we can ever perfectly understand what another person thought, what another person meant

>>14010290
>he thinks words have meaning
top kek

>>14010416
Based. I'm glad you agree. I think it's mostly monolinguals who disagree with what I've said. The best proof that what I've said is true is to simply learn another language and more importantly, to read the greatest works of literature in that language. It's shocking to read a translation alongside an original work. I often do this for fun and because it inspires me to keep improving my language skills.

Some texts have truly been destroyed by translation, especially translations done within the past few decades; it seems that translators are getting lazier or perhaps simply more political. I don't know what is going on, but I've seen books with whole words gone/changed, whole phrases, whole sentences, whole passages, books significantly shortened and the meaning changed. At this point, that isn't even translation. It's revisionary destruction. Modern translations should be avoided at all costs. Some older translators still suffer from the faults I mentioned in my OP, but at least they fucking tried.

Here is a fact: a modern translator won't get hired unless they're willing to let a politically/financially motivated editor destroy it, if he, the translator, won't destroy it himself. THAT alone should put enough doubt into trusting translation, even if one disagrees with the semantic point made above.

>>14010416
i think russian literature sounds far better in south slavic translations

>>14010484
Borges was multilingual and he would've disagreed with this. I agree that modern translators suck, though. Especial Anglophone ones.

>>14010324
>Translations are not 100% accurate therefore there translations have absolutely zero value

No one thinks there is nothing lost in translation.

Even a poor translation is still better than no translation.

>>14010290
REMINDER, all reading is revision, you are not the author and can never truly interpret their work as they experienced it while writing.

>>14010333
>tho literary translators are the craziest fucks ever

please explain

All interpretation is revision; all interpretation departs from the meaning of the original text. There is not a single existent interpretation that fully captures the meaning of the original text; this is linguistically impossible.

I speak three languages and think you're dumb in all three of them. Your point is trivial at best and incredibly stupid otherwise. You're sacralizing text to a terrible extent, on par with the brain capacity of normies. Read Borges' 'Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote' and it will BTFO your silly literalist delusions.

>>14010764
>he thinks the original text has a meaning and the point of interpretation is to get at that meaning

Stupid peasant.

>>14010290
Translation is not a revision -- it is an approximation

>>14010310
>>14010318
>>14010324
>>14010333
>>14010335
>>14010364
>>14010451
>>14010457
>>14010508
>>14010535
>>14010764
t. anons who constantly spam "what translation of X book do I read?" threads so that smarter anons can tell them what translation is the least shit.

>>14010805
I get my intel from elsewhere.

>>14010805
I do not really care which translation is "best," if it is something I am interested in and do not know the original language, I will read a few different translations.

>>14010508
>>Translations are not 100% accurate therefore there translations have absolutely zero value
That's not what he is saying you autistic cunt. He's talking about the pragmatic/contextual issues, not the semantic aspect. How do you sperg out with an OP about translation and not even understand that difference?

>>14010535
>>14010764
This. Even learning the langauge in which a text was originally written will not confer an authentic experience of that text, as your understanding of that langauge (and by extension the texts written in that language) will be mediated (and thus corrupted) by your mother tongue.

ANTI-INTERPRETATION POST
REMINDER: all final interpretation departs from the meaning of the original sign. There is not a single existent interpretant that fully captures the meaning of the original sign; this is logically impossible. Even translation between related signs like the direction of a weathercock and the direction of the wind is a cluster-fuck, let alone between qualisigns and legisigns (there is not a single good symbolic representation of a preconscious feeling of redness without losing the vast majority of the feeling itself in interpretation). If you are interpreting, a sign, you are not interpreting its sign-vehicle you cannot say "I've read Dostoyevsky" or "I've read Homer", instead you can only say "I've read a semiotic mutilation of Dostoyevsky/Homer."

Why is perfect interpretation impossible? Because meaning-making happens on three levels (sign-vehicle, object, interpretant.) and one can never trace a map without breaking it's rhizome. Images, sounds, often syntax, etc. are also hard to interpret, sometimes impossible. When a Portuguese speaker hears the word "saudade", it will recall so much cultural and emotional weight, a different sign, that cannot be rendered through it's object. This is an example from a language incredibly similar to English. Many languages also communicate meaning via their scripts such as the Asian tongues.

Since you can divide signs into at least ten classes:
pic related


One should attempt to mitigate such discrepancies when reading by avoiding semiosis and its inherent revisionism. This takes time and effort and most of the American/European public is too lazy to put in this effort in order to becoming-impreceptable; however, you cannot call yourself cultured, educated, or merely a "good pet" if you will not make such efforts to deny symbolic order. There are people on this board. These people sicken me. Learn to truly be /lit/. There is no excuse to not be actively learning right now. You don't have to

>>14010310
>all languages that are important in literature
that's english, french and russian.
totally manageable.

>>14011229
and Latin and Italian.

>>14011243

DAILY REMINDER, VISION IS AN IMPERFECT REPRESENTATION OF REALITY, YOUR EYES DISTORT REALITY AND ARE REVISIONIST, SURGICALLY REMOVE YOUR EYEBALLS RIGHT NOW

>>14010290
>I'd rather never read a work than read it with a slight loss in fidelity.

>There is not a single existent translation that fully captures the meaning of the original text

There is not a single original text that fully captures the intention of the author. Who fucking cares about your metaphysical presuppositions numbnuts!

so many seething and coping monolinguals in this thread lmaooo good job OP, or should i say, buen trabajo amigo :)

>>14012086
I'm multilingual, though.

>>14012086
>lazy peasant language
Being monolingual is preferable to knowing two languages and one of them being Spanish

>>14012124
mon ami, mais je parle aussi le français, tais-toi la gueule

>>14012124
>Being monolingual is preferable to knowing two languages and one of them being Spanish
shut up racist idiot

>>14010290
"im too lazy to read and ive adopted this gay stance to justify my illiteracy"

>>14012216
>"im too lazy to read and ive adopted this gay stance to justify my illiteracy"
think the only illiterate one here is you lmao re-read OP's post dumb retard

>>14012231
telling people not to read is extremely retard brained, gay universally

>>14012243
except he never said that lmao fucking illiterate retard

>>14012146
>another peasant dialect
You just self-owned, bro

>>14012260
what languages do you like

Why did you post this during hours when it's mostly monolingual Americans that are awake? Obviously they are going to defend their plebian ways...

It should be trivial to any serious reader, that you will lose a lot in the translation of any literary work. Unless you are mentally deficient and just reduce books to "stories & characters" (in which case you should stick to movies), you have to admit that the prose itself is absolutely essential to ascertain the quality of a book.
Sentence structure, writing style, rhythm, diction, lexical fields of the words used, etc. all differ widely even in closely related languages. Certain verb tenses don't exist in English or aren't used in the same context. Or how about heavily inflected languages that allow for many different kinds of sentence structures to give emphasize to different words. Or how about all the untranslatable particles in Ancient Greek.
At best, a translation can give you an approximation of the actual work. A faint idea, nothing more.
You know what, I will do one better; there are writers in other languages you won't understand unless you are well-versed in multiple languages. Some poems by Hölderlin will be beyond your grasp unless you know Ancient Greek for example.
For fuck's sake, there is a reason why nearly every major author from about the 17th century to the early 20th century spoke multiple languages. Tolstoy even went through the trouble of learning Ancient Greek in his 40s for example.

Obviously, all of this only applies to high literature. If all you read are fantasy novels and YA, I suppose it doesn't make much of a difference. It also doesn't mean that you should never read a book in translation, since you most likely won't be able to learn two-three dozen languages in your entire life. But just know your limitations to accurately judge and fully appreciate a work in translation. You should try to make it your goal to learn maybe half a dozen or so important literary languages that are somewhat closely related, so that you can at least have a decent understanding of European literature. If you then have to read Chinese and Japanese authors in translation, I guess it can't be helped.

>>14010290
I hate monolingual burgers but I also hate people who dislike translations. Fuck you all, you fucking niggers.

>>14012263
Hungarian, Finnish, Polish and English

>>14012318
weird choices, polish and english are pretty peasant-tier tho lol

>>14012318
Polish is THE peasant language. Spanish and French are superior in every way. Nice bait, faggot.

>>14012330
>>14012332
Polish is orders of magnitude more complex than any romance language. You faggots are just seething vulgar latin-cels

>>14010290
These are facts, and I have two options:

1. Completely rewire my brain to understand the intricacies of the original language, which would probably mean resocializing myself in their culture as an infant through age 6, assuming I have good parents, socioeconomic status, etc
2. I read a translation

Turn your perfectionism off and choose your battles. This thread won't make you any money.

>>14012353
It's a shit language regardless of complexity.

>>14012362
...? How is it a shit language? Polish poetry is incredibly pleasant. The high consonants and word sounds produce a really unique rhythm.

>>14012353
Uczę się języka polskiego. To jest bardzo ładny.

>>14010290
That's a big fucking textwall to explain something that's more or less common sense

Sometimes a translation can be better. For example, some people claim that Shakespeare sounds more natural in German than English (you can still say "wherefore" in German).

>>14010290
Nice! A translation thread, about time we had one. What's the best translation of pic related? Thanks friends.

>>14010740
imagine dedicating your life to some other author and knowing that your reading will have to be sufficient for an entire nation (which they mostly are)

i am just happy when my reading is sufficient for a sales pitch
>>14012386
no spoko ziomie, zjebales odmiane w tak prostym zdaniu
>>14011222
but what about the context and metapragmatic understanding and the metametapragmatic understandings

Is there anything more pleb than reading books in the original language?

>jealous monoglots can only read books in the original language
>patrician polyglots like myself can read the works of Goethe in French, the masterpieces of Proust in the superior Russian, Chinese and Japanese works in the opposite language, etc., opening up new vistas of interpretation and understanding

I tried reading a book in the original language once, just to see what it's like being a pleb, and it was a suffocating and nauseous experience. I pity those for whom there is no other option.

>>14010290
Ok retard.

>>14010290
Of course, but I'm not about to learn a couple of dozen languages. Agreed that if you know modern English, you can read Middle English. Even those works lose something in translation, as it's basically the same language.

Most of the world reads English-language books translated into their own languages too, do they get the same lecture?

>>14010484
I read in German, Spanish and English and can say that while the text as a whole can’t be 100% translated with all the “levels” you mentioned in your OP, a good translation can at least give you the gist of the work, enough so that you can participate in any discussion about the content of said text. You can’t criticize style tho, if you haven’t read the work in its original language.

Read Walter Benjamin’s Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers, in German, while you’re at it, big shot.

Is this a proper tranlation of Plato's collected writings.

>inb4 pleb

>>14012799
That's a collection of the Hackett translations, which they tend to use in philosophy classes. So, yes.

bump

Have popular latin platitudes captured the original text?

si vis pacem para bellum
deus vult
and shit like that

>>14012857
You want a fun one, look up "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" from the Aeneid.
>The genitive "rerum" can be construed as "objective" or "subjective." The scholar David Wharton observes that the "semantic and referential indeterminacy is both intentional and poetically productive, lending it an implicational richness most readers find attractive." In English, however, a translator must choose either one or the other, and interpretation has varied. Those who take the genitive as subjective translate the phrase as meaning that things feel sorrow for the sufferings of humanity: the universe feels our pain. Others translate the passage to show that the burden human beings have to bear, ever present frailty and suffering, is what defines the essence of human experience. Yet in the next line, Aeneas says: "Release (your) fear; this fame will bring you some deliverance." Those who take the genitive as objective understand the phrase as meaning that there are tears for things (in particular, the things Aeneas has endured) evinced in the mural: i.e., the paintings show Aeneas that he finds himself in a place where he can expect compassion and safety.

>>14010290
I like this thread because all you apparently need to take the supposedly tradition-inclined, patrician e/lit/e to a postmodern intellectual position is to call them stupid. Elsewhere anons declare relativism a plague while yearning for Enlightenment values and classic texts; ITT anons declare that there is no single meaning to the work and that the classic texts are barred from us by the gulf of centuries.

Sadly, I think they're right. Sometimes the translation exceeds the original.

>>14010290
When will this retarded meme die?

I know 90% of this is bait, but do people actually expect you to just master Russian if you feel like checking out Crime and Punishment?
I speak passable Spanish, and the amount of time it took before I could even get the gist of a basic newspaper article was insane. I could stumble through, say, 2666 in the original Spanish, but I'd be bound to miss subtext, wordplay, and cultural flavor, because those don't come naturally unless you're completely fluent or at least inundated in the language.
Now are you supposed to be doing that for a new language every time you feel like picking up a book? Languages like Mandarin which are effectively impossible for Westerners to master?

>>14011702
/thread

>>14011229
What about Chinese? What about Spanish?

>>14014046
agreed

>>14014025
What about OP's claim seems like a meme to you? You're a clown.

>>14010290
So what Portuguese lit should I read? I'm pretty much fluent by now, so have at it. Preferably philosophy and theology.

most of the comments are like "but that would be too hard! therefore you're wrong!"

actually the difficulty of learning a new language literally proves OP's point you retards. the harder the language is for you to learn, the more garbage the translations will be and the more meaning you'll lose.

>>14014046
In college I had a friend who learned Russian so he could read the classics.
He got decent at the language and was able to read the original Anna Karenina, but he admitted that he didn't get anything extra out of it (he'd read it once in English), aside from a slightly different "feel" of the language. He said that if you gave him a paragraph and had him translate it, it'd be pretty much the same as what Maude came up with, and that if you wanted to express every nuance of the language you'd need a page of translator's notes after every sentence.
Doesn't matter because everyone on /lit/ is a 180IQ CIA operative who can master Sanskrit in an afternoon and comprehend esoteric Hindu canon by that evening.

>>14014314
You'd lose magnitudes more by trudging through Dead Souls with mid-tier Russian skills than you would by reading in your native language as translated by someone who's mastered both languages and is literally a professional at transmuting flavor and subtext.

>>14012124
t. monolingual

this thread is stupid
a translation is a different thing based on the first thing
and it can be as good, worse, or better, than the first thing
you should just evaluate it based on whatever you read

the idea of the holy 'original' text is fucking stupid

woke
>reading translations by authors you already know and respect
>reading translations for works that have been translated so much that a near consensus has been reached on the best translation(s)

>russian lit
>good
wwwww

>>14014368
Are you retard or retard?

>>14010290
She kinda qt ngl WHY are tanned euro girls so cute

>>14014445
yes

>>14014065
Everything.
>>14014108
kek this guy
>>14014314
Makes no sense
>>14014445
He's right.

I've yet to read a single interesting argument against what I said in my OP. It's pretty sad to see all these pomo deconstructionists come out of the woodwork about how it's impossible to understand -anybody- fully. Even if that were true, it wouldn't justify making little to no effort to bridge semantic gaps through the acquisition and domination of further linguistic territory. Precisely because understanding others is difficult should we make more effort.

Another argument I read in a similar vein is just a petty reductio ad absurdum about signs in general and the mental processes that we employ to understand such signs. Once again, you are further justifying my point. The more difficult and foreign a thing is, the further away it is on the map of linguistic territory, the more effort it will take to bridge that semantic gap. And this domination of linguistic territory is a manly and virile endeavor, learning new words and how to employ them involves a process of total mental domination, the restructuring of one's interpretive faculties, and the re-sculpturing of one's discursive thought. The only response to that weak reductio is that the difficulty of sign interpretation is precisely the reason you should sharpen your skills in sign interpretation.

Most of what I read apart from that is just cope and straw-mans.
>but it's too hard
>but it would take a long time
>but you can't expect me to learn all those languages
>what if the translation is better though kek
>muh borges said
>you don't really lose that much meaning

The only one worth addressing is the pragmatic concerns. If you're concerned about time and effort, then I recommend you do this: learn your learn diachronically. If your native language is English, can you read Middle English? If not, then work towards that. Can you read Old English? If not, then works towards that. I don't expect everyone to become a polyglot (literally read my OP), but there is still no excuse to not actively be learning a new language. Just keep dominating more linguistic space.

You can be forgiven for some translations. Just do a cost-benefit analysis. How much literature do you want to read from X language? Let's say you're only interested in one Chinese text, then obviously the costs wouldn't justify the benefit. But let's say in your life you want to read a few dozen French novels, some poetry, some drama, etc. Then in this case, the costs justify the benefits and you have no excuses. You must learn French.

>>14014729
>what if the translation is better
This is the killer argument though. There is no metaphysical quality that an 'original' text has which renders it superior in some way. The stories Shakespeare stole are not better than Shakespeare

>>14014729
i agree with you, but your pics is fucking disgusting please next time post something at least half decent

>>14014729
Don't you have anything to recommend? Or are you not Portuguese after all?

>>14014804
I'm not Portuguese, I just like chestnut-colored, Moorish-Iberian mutts. My personal favorite writer in Portuguese is Sophia de Mello Breyner. Pessoa is obviously a favorite of /lit/'s. I can recommend both. Hélder is good. There are others I like whose names I can't recall at moment. I'll post my favorite poem from Mello Breyner. She's amazing. I need to read her prose.

Escuto
---------------
Escuto mas não sei
Se o que oiço é silêncio
Ou deus

Escuto sem saber se estou ouvindo
O ressoar das planícies do vazio
Ou a consciência atenta
Que nos confins do universo
Me decifra e fita

Apenas sei que caminho como quem
É olhado amado e conhecido
E por isso em cada gesto ponho
Solenidade e risco

Good luck finding Portuguese /lit/ in physical copies. I've had to read most of it online. It doesn't seem like Portuguese publishers really care too much about the international market, obviously apart from Brazil. I hope someday the Portuguese language will get more literary respect and the market will open up outside the lusophere. Good luck, anon!

>>14010290
incredibly based

>>14014896
Thanks for the recs, and for posting those qts. I've personally had some luck finding Portuguese lit in German stores. Mainly classics, though. So I feel the same way

>>14010290
>There are people on this board too lazy to read Middle English texts, which require only a little bit more effort than reading Modern English.

It's surprising just how much a translation can change The Canterbury Tales, even though it's only a short distance from Middle English to Modern English.

Here's a passage in the original Middle English:
>This clerk was cleped hende Nicholas;
>Of derne love he coude and of solas;
>And ther-to he was sleigh and ful privee,
>And lyk a mayden meke for to see.
>A chambre hadde he in that hostelrye
>Allone, with-outen any companye,
>Ful fetisly y-dight with herbes swote;
>And he him-self as swete as is the rote
>Of licorys, or any cetewale.
>His Almageste and bokes grete and smale,
>His astrelabie, longinge for his art,
>His augrim-stones layen faire a-part
>On shelves couched at his beddes heed:
>His presse y-covered with a falding reed.
>And al above ther lay a gay sautrye,
>On which he made a nightes melodye
>So swetely, that al the chambre rong;

And a translation into modern English (from David Wright's translation for Oxford):
>Fly Nicholas was what they called this scholar.
>For love sub rosa, pleasing, or for pleasure
>In bed or out of it, he’d a great knack;
>And he was wily too, and close as wax,
>Although he looked as demure as a maid.
>In the house he lodged in, he’d a room and bed
>All to himself, and prettily furnished
>With sweet delicious herbs; he was as sweet
>As ginger, or the root of licorice.
>His Almagest, and astrological
>Treatises, with his textbooks great and small,
>The instruments required for his science,
>His astrolabe, and abacus-counters,
>Were neatly stacked on shelves beside his bed;
>His wardrobe-chest was draped with scarlet frieze.
>A splendid psaltery hung overhead,
>On which, at night, he’d play sweet melodies,
>And fill the room with music till it rang;

>>14014896
>I just like chestnut-colored, moorish-iberian mutts
Bro...actually godlike taste you and me both friend

>tfw u have anxiety that op is right but u are pretty much monolingual
a-are there any interlinear/p-parallel text versions that are acceptable for things like don quijote, divine comedy, classics on that scale while i accept my plebdom? w-where 2 find?

>>14015618
Congratulations, you've fallen for the bait.
A brainlet medal is being sent to your physical address.

>>14015391
No problem, pal. Oh yeah, since you're in mainland Europe you should have a much easier time finding nice Portuguese books, or at least it won't cost you as much to have them shipped to you. Incredibly comfy.
>>14015402
It's actually shocking to compare the two. Sometimes it seems like some translators really aren't even bothering to translate anymore. I can't believe these people get paid. And from Oxford!
>>14015465
Pic related is for you. Enjoy, anon!
>>14015618
Yes, there are several parallel-text books out there. Loeb Classics has dedicated itself to publishing bilingual texts of the classics. There is a nice edition of the Divine Comedy out there with Longfellow's translation alongside it. I have nothing against bilingual texts and I think they're pretty helpful, especially when you're first learning a foreign language. If you can't find a bilingual edition, just acquire the original text and read a translation on your phone or whatever side-by-side. This is great for when you're first learning a foreign language since it'll mitigate some of your dictionary work (though not all). Doing this will also show you how bad translations can be and you'll find that some translations don't help you understand the original text at all. There are some languages that you'll pretty much have to pick yourself up by the bootstraps to become proficient in (I don't recommend your first foreign be one of these languages). Nonetheless, translations can function as rough guides so you're not too lost when you begin a new foreign language. At some point, you can do away with any such guides. Then you'll be literate.

>>14016009
Just perfect

>>14010805
I don't because I'm not an insecure faggot.
How many languages do you read by the way?

>>14011229
You forgot Greek, Latin, Arabic (yes, medieval theology is important you fucking pleb), German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, Farsi and Sanskrit, not to mention Chinese and Japanese.

>>14010508
>Even a poor translation is still better than no translation.
That was my point. Even reading in the original is not going to be 100% perfect, might as well accept than reading translations is not so bad.

>>14014729
>Even if that were true, it wouldn't justify making little to no effort to bridge semantic gaps through the acquisition and domination of further linguistic territory.
That's a nice argument but everybody knows you're not going to commit to that effort for every book you might want to read. Hence the use of reading translations, which is also an effort btw.

Also it's not pomo to suggest that telepathy doesn't exist and that you can't fully understand a book when you've not been raised in the same context as the author. In fact it's just an extension of your own argument.

>The only response to that weak reductio is that the difficulty of sign interpretation is precisely the reason you should sharpen your skills in sign interpretation.
Again, an argument for learning more languages, not for not reading translations. I read in three languages, I'm currently learning two others and I used t translate Latin for fun. You're preaching to the choir in every respect except when you conclude that one shouldn't read translation, which doesn't follow at all.

> I don't expect everyone to become a polyglot (literally read my OP)
Precisely why you shouldn't blame anyone from reading in translation when they don't know the language.
It seems your own arguments in this post don't really support your conclusion.

>You can be forgiven for some translations. Just do a cost-benefit analysis.
And now you're essentially rephrasing the argument of some of your contradictors. If you're not really anti-translation why title your thread: "Anti-translation thread"?

>translation is impossible
>but it's possible to learn new languages
imagine being this fucking stupid
the learning of a language by necessity requires a form of translation

OP is a retard by axiomatic truth

>>14010290
That's good and all but I can't learn every fucking language. It also sounds like there's a "cultural" element in understanding that you didn't mention.

>>14010318
>didn't study Ancient Hebrew + Ancient Greek at seminary