[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 33 KB, 400x320, lepoet.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12535844 No.12535844 [Reply] [Original]

Daily reminder that most of your favourite authors read the classics in translation.

>> No.12535913

... unless they were english & went to a public school & were born before 1920

>> No.12535958

most of your favorite authors were sexist racist pigs as well, that doesnt make it right

this post was made by
multilingual classicists against the patriarchy

>> No.12535964

>>12535958
There's nothing wrong with being sexist nor racist, though, as long as you don't hurt anyone.

>> No.12536013
File: 101 KB, 904x680, file_laugh2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12536013

>Shakespeare read everything in translation
>mfw he lifts several speeches verbatim from a bad translation of Plutarch

>> No.12536038

Interviewer: It's disturbing to think that we've read many gods (James, Stendhal, Proust) in translations, in this second-hand versions. Is this literature? If we go about this issue, it's possible that we end up concluding that words don't have an equivalent.

Bolaño: I think they do have it. Besides, literature is not made by words alone. Borges says that there are unstranslatable authors. I think he mentions Quevedo as an example. We could add García Lorca and others. Despite all that, a work such as Don Quixote could resist even the worst translator. What's more: it could resist mutilation, the loss of numerous pages, and even a shit storm. All in all, poorly translated, incomplete and damaged, that version of Don Quixote could say a lot to a Chinese man or to an African man. And that is literature, undoubtedly. Maybe a lot is lost along the way, without a doubt, but maybe that was its destiny. We get what we get.

>> No.12537261

bump

>> No.12537280

>>12536038
>Bolaño
holy shit what a fucking emptyheaded longwinded pretentious fuckwit pseud, using a whole paragraph only to say "it is what it is."
ASS

>> No.12537291

>>12537280
pretty sure this was just an interview, it's not in any of his actual books and it wouldn't be as strong as having just said "it is what it is". Don't be autistic.

>> No.12537307

>>12535964

>Theres nothing wrong with thinking things are wrong with people on the base of their sex or race when its not something that actually affects anyone

>> No.12537316

>>12537307
Not all sexism or racism is based on finding what's wrong with other races or the other sex. Some of it is purely egotistical and aesthetic, or even practical.