/lit/ - Literature

>>16676011
Depends on the translator, as always.

I tried reading the H.F Cary translation and I didn't understand anything.
>>16676015
Who do you recommend?

>>16676011
it's nowhere near as good as the real thing (learn italian, it's easy), but yes - dante's narrative & theology are kino

>>16676033
Italians struggle with Dante, learning Italian is not a gateway to read him

>>16676060
Not the anon you're replying to, but I've heard the opposite.

yes retardo
you will not learn a language so just read it and enjoy your 98% accurate version instead of the 100% one

>>16676011
as an Italian, yes

>>16676171
Probably since a lot of Italians learn Latin in school, and Dante is in the middle
But a full italian speaker with no idea of Latin will struggle a fuck ton

>>16676226
I see, but wouldn't modern Italian still help a lot for understanding Dante?

>>16676011
You're probably a lazy fuck that won't learn Italian, so yes. Don't fall on that pseudo /lit faggoty of "translation bad" just to keep procrasting on reading the greatest classics that we've ever produced. Reading them in any form is better than not reading them.

>>16676031
John Sinclair
>>16676233
this is correct, wasting time finding the "best" translation is also retarded

>>16676033
>>16676060
>>16676171
Pastafag here, I believe learning current italian and try reading Dante is comparable to learning english and then reading Milton. Mmm no actually Dante would be harder.

>>16676011
Didn't make me laugh even once.

>>16676716
But still I don't advice reading it translated, imo the best thing of the Divina Commedia is the craft and sound of the words.

>>16676226
>Dante is in the middle
Where did you read this bullshit? Old Italian doesn't mean it's a middle way between Italian and Latin. Dante wrote in full Italian and you can understand all of it without knowing Latin.

A good example of an author actually "in the middle" is Teofilo Folengo (16th century), who wrote in macaronic Latin, a Latin mixed with regional Italian.

>>16676547
>wasting time finding the "best" translation is also retarded
It takes 10 minutes

>>16676547
>wasting time finding the "best" translation is also retarded

>>16676725
>imo the best thing of the Divina Commedia is the craft and sound of the words.
I bet you read other works in other languages without worry about missing out on meaning.

Fuck learning Italian OP, life is way too short to waste huge amounts of time learning a language that is only spoken in one country just because some autist insisted that won't fully profit from a book if you don't. Anyway I read in both French and English and sometimes I think the translation is actually better written and improves upon the original. Fuck purists.

prose or verse translation?

>>16676787
Verse obviously

>>16676011
Yes, as long as you don't forget that it's not Dante, but a mere translation.

>>16676060
No, Italians don't really "struggle" with Dante.

>>16676716
Maybe he is harder than Milton, but not in a significant way. I am Brazilian and read some Dante even before I started learning Italian, only using a bilingual edition.
Jorge Luis Borges did the same thing. Both of us found it easy to understand.

Dante is hard because of the subject matter: there are many characters and ideas which are little-known today. Besides, he sometimes uses obscure language deliberately, talking in enigmas. This is why there are so many footnotes. But his vocabulary and syntax are rather easy to understand - his syntax a little less so, but still not really difficult to grasp.

For the average Italian reader, reading a page from a middle school mathematics textbook is probably harder than reading a page from Dante (by reading I mean just reading; interpreting is another issue altogether). And, if you find middle school mathematics too difficult, then you shouldn't even be thinking of reading Dante...

>>16676777
No translation of Dante will ever be better than the original.

>>16676847
>No translation of Dante will ever be better than the original.
Why? Was Dante a wizard? This dogmatism is baffling.

>>16676904
>Why? Was Dante a wizard?
No, simply because it's poetry.

>>16676725
That is true for all poetry

>>16676974
Some poetry more than others though

>>16676904
There can be a translation that is better than the original. But there won't.

Unless the next Dante, who's going to appear in 500 years, dedicates many, many years of his life to translating Dante, which he won't because that would be a waste of his talents.
Dante is one of those poets who, generally speaking, cannot be improved, unless you are as talented as he was and dedicate a very large amount of time to improving him.
I do not think Shakespeare would have been able to do it - and he would have had to abandon writing many of plays in order to embark on a such a laborious endeavor. Even then, he would probably have to alter so much content that it would end up not even being Dante anymore, but rather an independent work, valuable in its own right, but quite different from the original.

I am a poetry translator and have translated short poems by Dante, Cavalcanti, and Guinizelli. I don't think I have ever come close to improving them, even though I did my best. All I can do is to try to give the reader a fine and profitable impression of what the original sounds like.

>>16676011
Learning Italian will realistically take a few years. No reason not to read a translation now, it's an important piece of the western canon that still influences the way we think about hell and that also inspired countless other works of literature. The original will always be superior but if you're committed to it you can just re-read it in Italian eventually.

Only if you read the hungarian translation by Babits which is the objective best

>>16677065
>ywn drip this hard

>>16677014
>and have translated short poems by Dante, Cavalcanti, and Guinizelli
Based

>>16676727
>Where did you read this bullshit? Old Italian doesn't mean it's a middle way between Italian and Latin. Dante wrote in full Italian and you can understand all of it without knowing Latin.
Yeah you are right, I fucked up, sorry

>learning Italian only to read Dante
Big mistake

why do people make these threads. you're too stupid to actually meaningfully discuss the book itself so you just posture about translations? it's pathetic.