/lit/ - Literature

>>5692742
Someone else checked it for me.

You can't.

Duh.

I read an edition of Hamsun's Hunger with a note from the translator, slamming in detail two previous translations, with examples and justifications for regarding them as lacking.

>>5692742
I know 11 languages, no problems here.

>>5692742
You look for the translator reputation. Most translator worth your time are well known already. For example, my Iliad translation was made by a well known national poet who had a phd on greek lit and proved himself with an amazing eneid translation. Some good translators even have a collection named after them, like Sergio Pitol, another local champion, cervantes prize winner and everything, who was a traveler and also learned more than 15 languages.

>>5692742
what episode is this from?

>>5692776
Homer Badman.

>>5692776

The one where Homer is accused of sexual harrassment.

>>5692742
meme speak, meme speak everywhere

Also I bought a Karamazov Brothers once, from a booklet publisher house. I was, right away, able to tell the translation was crap because of the wording and expresions that made no sense. It was too obvious the translator got everything literal.

>>5692742

It uses 'cockroach'/'bug'/'insect' where it should use 'vermin'.

>>5692793

You know it's good when it uses terms it shouldn't?

>>5692742
You compare translations

>>5692799
He means in Kafka's. That's one of the most notorious translation problems on universal lit. Borges had vermin, "alimaña", in spanish. I don't know how american translators got it.

>>5692799

I was being sarcastic.

>>5692809

You're awfully good at being sarcastic.

>>5692814

And you.

>>5692808

I baffles me that some retards think 'cockroach' is acceptable even after Nabokov demonstrated that the creature in The Metamorphosis cannot be a cockroach.

>>5692816

Does it matter what specifically he is? 'Vermin' is very problematic as a translation, certainly.

So, what's the best translation for Don Quixote?

>>5692830

'Ungeziefer' - a vermin, an unclean animal unfit for sacrifice.

If Kafka meant 'cockroach' he would have written the German word for 'cockroach'.

>>5692830
Well, given how rooted on the semiosphere the damned cockroach is, iI have to say it would've been interesting to see it develop from the right thing.

>>5692839
Edith Grossman

>>5692843
>a vermin

That's the thing, though - it's very unusual to use 'vermin' as a singular. Most uses of the singular, ironically, are in reference to a person, making it uniquely problematic for The Metamorphosis.

>>5692846

What difference do you imagine it making?

>>5692859
beats me.

>>5692859
>it's very unusual to use 'vermin' as a singular

No it isn't. You're absolutely reaching now. Unless you think Kafka shouldn't have used 'Ungeziefer'? Of course. You know better than Kafka.

also

>using the word 'problematic'

Holy fuck, with all these weasel words it's like I'm actually on reddit.

>>5692848
Thanks.

>>5692839
Pierre Menard's

>>5692868
but he's the author

>>5692863
>No it isn't.

Yes, it is. Source: googling 'a vermin' in quotes yields ~100k hits, googling 'vermin' alone yields ten times that, suggesting something in the order of a 9:1 ratio, and larger once you account for the uses of 'a vermin' which, problematically for this specific text, actually refer to a person, as well as phrases such as 'a vermin problem' or 'a vermin infestation' etc, not to mention taxonomical uses such as 'Rattus norvegicus is a vermin common to...'.

Further support - Merriam-Webster:

>1: a) small common harmful or objectionable animals (as lice or fleas) that are difficult to control
>birds and mammals that prey on game
>animals that at a particular time and place compete (as for food) with humans or domestic animals
>2: an offensive person

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vermin

Oxford online:

>1: Wild animals which are believed to be harmful to crops, farm animals, or game, or which carry disease, e.g. rodents
>1.1 Parasitic worms or insects
>1.2 People perceived as despicable and as causing problems for the rest of society

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/vermin

Note that only one of the two even offers a singular definition and that it refers exclusively to people. Now, quite probably you can dig up a dictionary that does offer the singular, but that's no challenge at all to my claim that the usage is very unusual.

>Unless you think Kafka shouldn't have used 'Ungeziefer'?

If he was writing The Metamorphosis with its eventual English translation as his overriding concern, then yes, I'd say he probably shouldn't have. Since that's almost inexpressibly unlikely to have been the case, we may safely disregard Kafka's own word choice and return our focus to the actual discussion - namely, the word choice of the translator(s).

Now, evidently you entered this discussion with the idea in your head that you would name-drop Borges and Nabokov and so on and receive timid, adulatory golf-claps for your manifest erudition. Possibly you can successfully defend 'vermin' as the only appropriate term, possibly you cannot. Certainly, you've not even begun to do so.

>>5692894

And you still don't have a better translation, all you have is nitpicking about morphosyntax of English, which is trumped by the fact that 'vermin' renders the semantics of the term Kafka used far better than any other word. 'Vermin' remains the best word to use in English translation. Faggot.

>>5692894
>name-drop Borges

I did that where?

If you can't read, don't lecture me on language based on fucking Google and Merriam Webster, retard.

>>5692898
>>5692903
>>5692894

And I see you don't actually have a better suggestion, or an argument as to why 'insect', or 'cockroach' should be acceptable, so I guess you're just a contrarian shitposter looking to pick fights. /lit/ is, once again, full of intellectually dishonest retards. Bye.

>>5692898

So, in summary:

I was wrong about 'a vermin' until I proved myself correct, at which point the issue metamorphosed into a nit.

Simultaneously, the "semantics" of 'Ungeziefer' are "better rendered" by 'vermin' than by any other candidate in spite of the very problem I've referred to (for this, no support is offered, but you have previously mentioned Nabokov and are therefore correct by default, presumably).

I am a "faggot".

This is all very confusing.

>>5692903
>I did that where?

'...and so on', meaning '...and things in that vein'. You yourself replied to the person who mentioned Borges. But no, you personally did not specifically type the letters B-O-R-G-E-S, and so I hang my head in shame, utterly defeated on every point of substance.

>>5692912

Nothing says 'confidence' like replying to the same post three times, I always find. My support for 'cockroach' is based on two points: Firstly, the specific creature Samsa has become is not overly important. We may assume he isn't an ant, since they are held to be industrious, perhaps even a generic beetle might be difficult, given the expression 'as busy as a beetle'. Secondly, 'like a cockroach' and similar are frequently used to refer to offensive or distasteful people, eg, "Why is this shitposting /pol/tard tripfaggot spazztarding around ITT before scurrying away like a cockroach?"

But I don't have all that strong an opinion on the matter, presumably because I didn't read somewhere that an Impressive Name had formed this or that opinion of it and promptly decide to spend my whole life trundling that fact in front of me like a scarab.

>reading translation
Fucking plebs

Actually, the best you can do by yourself is to pick up several translations and compare them. For the most part though, you'll have to trust the critics.

>>5692951
But even if you pick up something like 4-5 translations of Dante or Cervantes, how do you know which one emulates the language the best if you haven't/can't read it in its original language? I mean, you can read them and find what you like best but if you don't know the original text you can't really say, can you?

>>5692956
Thus why you will have to rely on critics.

To be honest, this sad state of things is what led me to my (probabibly autistic) quest through Spanish and Italian.

>>5692927

No post on 4chan has ever contained as much autism and damage control as this one.

>doesn't know shit about linguistics
>is a contrarian who picks fights just because
>has no actual argument, just nitpicking based on Google and the dictionary
>is utterly wrong on all counts and gets blown the fuck out
>wrongly accuses interlocutors of name-dropping
>still has no argument

Yes, you are quite the faggot.

>>5692898
>>5692903
>Faggot
>retard
Even by your own admitted standards as an Australian from /pol/ you're pathetic.

>>5692970

Well, that reply is both charitable in its reading and substantive in its response. Touche, good sir. Touche.

>>5692956
This. How can I enjoy reading when I am constantly terrified that I will miss some nuance in the medieval Tuscan - a pun or some kind of word play that cannot be translated. What if someone calls me on this one day and I am humiliated?

>>5692978
Dude, most spanish speakers would read don quixote and think it was written on a foreign language. I'm native, took a college course on don quixote where the phd went saying by saying, pun by pun, word by word, and still can't fully grasp it. Some passages are really obscure even for professors.

>>5692978
Oh, you know what I mean. A book that has been translated has lost part of its essence and it just upsets me a tiny bit. I couldn't care less if someone would "call me out" on it but it tickles my autism bone sometimes.

>>5692992
But what if I'm on a date with a qt (a 6 or above even) and this comes up, she works one of the word plays into the conversation and I can't cope? No this is an unacceptable risk for me!

>>5692742

Does it sound good? Does it make sense? Is it consistent? Then it's a good translation.

Who's read The Master and Margarita? I'm struggling through what feels like a horribly over-literal translation- the English prose is clunky as hell. So I guess that's one way of identifying a bad translation- assuming of course that Bulgakov didn't write Russian like a second language speaker.

>>5693102
Your post reminded me of a scene from The Wire
>Does he have a face? Does he have hands? Yes? Then it wasn't us.

>>5693181

Me too!

>tfw always boris

>>5693102
What if the original didn't sound good or make sense though, ya mongoloid? Should a translator produce a quality work equal to the original or surpass it?

Parrot someone else on the internet so, to strangers, it looks like you are multi-lingual

>>5692742
is that you, Zeeburg?

>>5692764
As a fellow Spanish speaker, may I ask who translated your Illiad?

>>5695374
Rubén Bonifaz Nuño

>>5692742
other people tell you its good and you believe them

>>5692843
DUDE KAKALAKA LMAO