when did you realize this?

[Anonymous No.16495250]

>when reading a translation, you're not reading a single word that the author wrote

[Anonymous No.16495260]

>>16495250
Literature is not made up of words alone. Literature is about symbols and meaning. That's Translation 101.

[Anonymous No.16495265]

>>16495250
The names don't change, stupid.

[Anonymous No.16495285]

r/epicshowerthoughts take all my gold11!!1

[Anonymous No.16495286]

>>16495285
kek

[Anonymous No.16495291]

>when reading a copy that wasn’t hand-written by the author, you're not reading a single word that the author wrote

[Anonymous No.16495303]

>>16495250
you don't realize it until you learn another language. there is a frightening amount that gets lost.

[Anonymous No.16495304]

>>16495260
fpbp

[Anonymous No.16495309]

>>16495291
>if the author isn't literally yelling at you how can you be sure you're getting his unfiltered thoughts

[Anonymous No.16495343]

Why don't mods just permaban OP? He'll keep making worthless reddit threads forever

[Anonymous No.16495361]

>>16495250
>when reading a translation, you're not reading a single word that the author wrote
I use this as justification for reading the summary of long epics instead of the actual (translated) text.

[Anonymous No.16495364]

>>16495309
>if im not the author how can i be sure of what they are thinking

[Anonymous No.16495366]

>>16495343
you seriously think he's the only frogposter on /lit/?

[Anonymous No.16495375]

>>16495366
No, retard

[Anonymous No.16495382]

>when did you realize that all of Mozart's, Beethoven's, Bach's, Vivaldi's, etc songs are covers due to them not being the composer in any recording

[Anonymous No.16495387]

>>16495364
>if I’m not God how can i be truly certain of what the author is thinking because the subconscious of a man can be a mystery even to himself and so only the ultimate being can truly perceive reality

[Anonymous No.16495702]

>>16495387
drawn out. it was max funny at >>16495364
but you ruined it

faggot

[Anonymous No.16496511]

What if the author is the one who translated his own work?

[Anonymous No.16496539]

I live in Florida. I came from Peru when i was 12(27 now) Basically, anyone wanting to learn another language seems retarded to me. Theres no benefit on learning another language if you live in the us. I still speak it at home, but theres no point outside of it. All i consume and think about is in english. Fuck spanish and fuck other languages.

[Anonymous No.16496545]

>>16495250
thats why I read interlinears when I can

[Anonymous No.16496546]

>>16496539
You have to go back.

[Anonymous No.16496565]

>>16496511
like beckett? good question.

[Anonymous No.16496572]

>>16496539
>peruANO
>having a nigger tier mentality
classic

[Anonymous No.16496674]

>>16496539
God, I'm thankful of not being a fucking peruvian.

[Anonymous No.16497121]

>>16495260
Based and Benjamin pilled

[Anonymous No.16497158]

>>16495702
disagree, he ended it perfectly

[Anonymous No.16497170]

>>16495260
based
>>16495250
not only that, but if its a european language a dect amount of words can be translated literally one to one.

[Anonymous No.16497180]

>>16495702
disagree poor taste. as an ending post on a chain it is good to be a bit more verbose.

[Anonymous No.16497206]

>>16495260
extremely based

[Anonymous No.16497234]

>>16495250
It's only an issue if the image produced is inadequate to that evoked in the original; poor phonosemantic matching will have that mongrelized feel in vaguely the same form, yet inferior. If you aren't approaching the task as a looting operation accruing toward the target language, there's no point in bothering is the paraphrastic calque prose rendering in this instant electronically generated age

[Anonymous No.16497574]

>>16495250
What if in one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books he writes the word patata and there is a one to one correlation to the word potato? That would be a single word that the author wrote that you just read.

[Anonymous No.16498452]

>>16495250
>when reading anything in any language, you're not comprehending a single idea the author wrote

[Anonymous No.16498528]

the untranslated Latin is exactly as the author wrote it

[Anonymous No.16498568]

>>16495260
Bingo.
Most of the greatest minds in the west read Latin versions of the Greek classics, did it stop them? Montaigne preferred Latin texts even though he could read the Greek originals also.
If you really break it down with communication theories, no one, even in your own language is really expressing something that isn't interpreted by you differently than them in some way or another.
I have used 4chan since my teens and I'm nearly 30, I know how threads like this can create an impression on a younger mind. You suddenly feel silly about the translation you just bought, you don't read it, you buy a grammar instead, and when you realise it's not exactly feasible to pick up ancient greek while juggling your own life, you end up back at square one, still not having read a single page of The Republic, or whatever.
>tl;dr
Just read whatever version you have, you wrestle with the concepts; with what is expressed between the lines. Fuck this elitist time wasting nonsense.

[Anonymous No.16498921]

>>16495265
sometimes they do
in french- milou (says wooah wooah)
in english- snowy (says woof woof)

[Anonymous No.16498972]

I was reading a Penguin copy of the Trial, then misplaced it, then tried to continue reading from another copy published by Hesperus, but it was totally different, and definitely not as good. Luckily I found the first copy again.

Trying to find a quote from Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, and not finding it because it was OUP rather than Dover.

[Anonymous No.16499291]

With the exception of poetry, you can convey they author’s words fairly well when translating between indo-European languages.
Things do get hairy when translating between languages like Chinese or Japanese and English because the languages are so different and the cultures have entirely different thinking processes.