/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21571142]

>Translated by the author

[Anonymous No.21571151]

>Authored by the translator

[Anonymous No.21571157]

>>21571142
>Translator isn't ESL

[Anonymous No.21571413]

>>21571142
That would be ideal, actually. And since the language he’s translating into isn’t his first language, he would likely know when to ask a fluent friend for the right words or cultural implications

[Anonymous No.21571419]

>>21571413
>And since the language he’s translating into isn’t his first language

[Anonymous No.21571499]

>>21571419
>And since the language he’s translating from isn’t his first language

[Anonymous No.21571512]

>>21571419
“Would likely”. I never said it was always necessary.

[Anonymous No.21571605]

>>21571512
>would likely
That was referring to him knowing when to ask a fluent friend for help.

Anyway I wasn't trying to argue, just pointing out a contrary example

[Anonymous No.21571740]

>>21571605
The ideal ideal would be an author fluent in both languages, obviously.

[Anonymous No.21571783]

>>21571499
Who's this fella? He looks like he'd kill me in the prison bathrooms or something.

[Anonymous No.21571787]

>>21571783
Moody Morrissy pessimist of the east.

[Anonymous No.21571792]

>>21571787
You mean Cioran? Doesn't quite look like himself.

[Anonymous No.21571840]

>>21571413
Nah, it's more likely that the author will end up creating a new work based on the original one, or simply a new paraphrase of it.

The distance between the two minds is indispensable for a real translation.

[Anonymous No.21571962]

>>21571783
It’s Samuel Beckett.

[Anonymous No.21571975]

>>21571840
Since it is his own story only he should be able to know best. Now we’ve already gone over this.

Now imagine Nabokov trying to tell the same stories in the Russian translation. You’re saying He’d be wrong and we need someone who pretends to know exactly what he means in each story? Absurd.

[Anonymous No.21572557]

>>21571975
>Since it is his own story

But it is not his own language. The translation involves both the story and the two languages in question. The author does not have the necessary distance between original story and language of destination, so when he sits to write the translation his mind will start developing the story, not just telling it as if it was fix.

On the other hand, a translator cannot do that because it is not his own story, so he can treat it as an object and focus on the translation.

[Anonymous No.21572567]

>>21571840
EVERY translation is an interpretation. The point of translation is to convey as closely as possible the meaning of a text originally written in a language A using another language B. A translator has to pick up the original text written by whatever author and carefully understand it as to pick the right words, phrasings and uses of grammar to try and convey as exactly as possible the original meaning or feelings (and don't even get me started on works highly dependent on prose and flow such as poetry and fiction, as those are a thousand times more complicated to properly translate). An ideal translation between two languages not very closely related WILL be a paraphrasing. Word-for-word "translations" (which you are sort of implying to be good) are nothing but cheap trash, even google translator can make those.

Assuming that the original writer is a person who is fluent in both the original language and the one the work is being translated to, there is no one else who would be better at doing the job of translation than this very author himself; and no reason whatsoever to think otherwise.

[Anonymous No.21573110]

>>21571783
Cheese I mean cleese

[Anonymous No.21574302]

>>21572567
>The point of translation is to convey as closely as possible the meaning of a text originally written in a language A using another language B

Wrong my friend. Translating something doesnt have the goal of conveying the meaning expressed in langage A in language B, but of finding an equivalent of that meaning in language B.

If what you say was possible then language would just be a code to express an objective world that exists without language. Thats not what language is.

Meaning A can only exist in language A, never in B. Meaning B is something that can be judged parallel to meaning A, but it will be so IN FUNCTION OF language B.

And for your last phrase, see >>21572557.

[Anonymous No.21574324]

>>21574302
>Meaning A can only exist in language A
That's why i say "as closely as possible", anon. Of course a meaning A can only exist in language A, no two words in different languages are exactly equal no matter how close.

>And for your last phrase, see [this post]
Alright...
>The author does not have the necessary distance between original story and language of destination, so when he sits to write the translation his mind will start developing the story, not just telling it as if it was fix
An author intelligent enough to write something good should also be intelligent enough to avoid this.

[Anonymous No.21574340]

>>21574324
>as closely as possible

The thing is that accomplishing what you say is not just 'hard' but is something logically impossible. Of course two languages cannot be identical, but it is not because the thing is too unlikely (as if it could maybe someday happen), but because it would simply be impossible.

>An author intelligent enough

Thats where the misconception lies. No one controls that intentionally. Themind is always working things on its own, outside and beyond consciousness. It never stops.

[Anonymous No.21574364]

>>21574340
>The thing is that accomplishing what you say is not just 'hard' but is something logically impossible. Of course two languages cannot be identical, but it is not because the thing is too unlikely (as if it could maybe someday happen), but because it would simply be impossible.
And again i say that that's why i mention "as closely as possible". Of course it's not attainable to obtain an identical meaning when translating from one language to another. It is possible though to get an _approximate_ meaning (i hope my point will be more clear by using "approximate").

>No one controls that intentionally. Themind is always working things on its own, outside and beyond consciousness. It never stops
True, but a person in the activity of writing serious literature by principle must be in certain control of his mind, otherwise everything he'd write or type would be an unadultered mental stream of nonsense or gibberish. Given that it's possible to have enough mind control to write good prose or coherent arguments (and go back and correct mistakes if necessary), it certainly must be possible to have enough mind control not to deviate from the story oneself originally wrote before translating the text.

[Anonymous No.21574374]

>>21574364
>Given that it's possible to have enough mind control

Well yeah sure, but there youre speaking of something like a God or a hardcore mystic that lives practically on another dimension, because the common human being we all are is just guided by a consciousness that does nothing but receive what the mind sends to it (which of course can take the form of telling conscousness that it is 'in control').

My point is simply that the new presence created by the mind of the translator is necessary for translation to happen. The author himself -his mind- cannot treat his own creation as an object (even if at some point his treating it might need to be conceived as such).

[Anonymous No.21574408]

>>21571419
> A man speaking English beautifully chooses to speak in French, which he speaks with greater difficulty, so that he is obliged to choose his words carefully, forced to give up fluency and to find the hard words that come with difficulty, and then after all that finding he puts it all back into English, a new English containing all the difficulty of the French, of the coining of thought in a second language, a new English with the power to change English forever. This is Samuel Beckett. This is his great work. It is the thing that speaks. Surrender.

Rushdie knew what the fuck is up

[Anonymous No.21574454]

>>21574374
Did you just skip the entire rest of my argument completely? "Given that it's possible" in my post is directly folowed by "to have enough mind control to write good prose or coherent arguments", something we are all aware humans can do, otherwise we wouldn't even be having this debate right now. You either missed my point extremely hard or just ignored it completely.

[Anonymous No.21574483]

>>21574454
>something we are all aware humans can do

Im aware of what you said, but thats the point of thw two phrases in parentheses: the seeming control we have is itself contained within the wider activity of the mind, which we -as consciousness- can never control nor directly perceive. We just get its results in consciousness.

So, yeah, things are the way you say from a practical consciousness-centered pov, But then, from a wider more descriptive pov, there is a continuous ongoing process that we cant just put in check whenever we like and then launch again as we please. We are just immersed in it and we move according to its motion.

The surfer does not control the sea or the wave, he just controls his own equilibrium on them.

[Anonymous No.21574507]

>>21571142
Examples of this aside from Nabokov?

[Anonymous No.21574534]

>>21574483
When did i ask for an entire lecture on spinozan/kantian determinism? It's completely irrelevant here. Someone having an unconscious mind influencing his actions doesn't make his conscious mind useless. The only thing i want to know here is how the fuck is any of this a valid argument for the absurd implication that "only something like a god or a hardcore mystic that lives practically on another dimension would have enough mind control to write good prose or coherent arguments". I do not know if you yourself noticed it, but that's the exact implication you make when you cut off the greentext at >>21574374 right before i say "good prose" and then follow in the quote with "only a god [would be able]".

Answer me very honestly right now, i have never asked this question seriously to anyone before and i mean it here without any irony: are you high?

[Anonymous No.21574606]

>>21574534
Lol I did feel as I wrote that I was taking it too far from the discussion, but it is because it has relevant implications for it. The point is here:

>Someone having an unconscious mind influencing his actions doesn't make his conscious mind
>useless

It of course doesnt make it useless, but it only makes it practical. That is, it is something useful but you cannot take that perspective and its practical efficacy as a base for knowledge nor come to the conclusion that you know the world just because you can act in it.

The relevance of this to the translation discussion is that if an author grabs his own text and begins translating it, his mind will be unable to treat it as a fixed or external object to be turned into a new object -the translation-, but will instead continue developing it as the original entity it once produced.

In a word, a translation by the author will just end up being a sequel, even if it doesnt show as such.

And no im not high. Or maybe im high all the time. Bu then, I would just ask you: Have you no been high enough to see that our practical consciousness is just a useful image of a wider world?

Anyway, the central point here is the translation thing.

[Anonymous No.21574663]

>>21574606
>his mind will be unable to treat it as a fixed or external object to be turned into a new object -the translation-, but will instead continue developing it as the original entity it once produced
This is simply farfetched speculation on your part. Is it that impossible for you to simply imagine an author writing the same story/essay/work a second time in the same way based on what he's written before? Are you yourself unable to do that and projecting?

>In a word, a translation by the author will just end up being a sequel, even if it doesnt show as such
"Even if it doesn't show as such?" Then what is the difference? If it doesn't show itself as a sequel then it's not gonna be a sequel to anyone who reads it, no matter how one tries to make semantic games like this.

[Anonymous No.21574712]

>>21574663
Yeah I might be just projecting. I just say: try it yourself and, as you do it, try to observe, not just the final result but the process itself.

And the difference is that 'if it doesn't show as such', it is because the story itself developed further in the mind of the author. What does he do with that if it doesnt get in the translation? That question of course is irrelevant for the reader.

[Anonymous No.21574732]

>>21574712
>try to observe, not just the final result but the process itself
After the final result is there, the process is irrelevant. No reader is ever going to observe this "process".

>What does he do with that if it doesnt get in the translation? That question of course is irrelevant for the reader
Exactly. The question is irrelevant for the reader therefore it has practically no relevance at all in any context, because the only final goal of making a translation is, well, having a translation. Nothing else matters as long as readers have in hands the final product.

But to actually give an answer to this:
>the story itself developed further in the mind of the author. What does he do with that if it doesnt get in the translation

Well, one of the two: either you write it down as an idea for some other work or you just let go. Think of it like a high-effort 4chan post where you put a lot of soul into the text and made something brilliant but read it later and realize there could've been an extra paragraph that would make it even better, but now you've already posted it. It's sort of like this. You just let go.

[Anonymous No.21574744]

>>21574732
huh?

[Anonymous No.21574753]

>>21574732
you expressed your position clearly and it stands as such. Just know that those fields, irrelevant or even inexistent from the practical pov, do exist and can be explored.

>You just let go.

You as consciousness do indeed let go, but the mind doesnt... and as it grows it will all come out later.

[Anonymous No.21574760]

>>21574753
>You as consciousness do indeed let go, but the mind doesnt... and as it grows it will all come out later.
Yeah, maybe.

>>21574744
What part of the post did you not understand, anon?

[Anonymous No.21574769]

>>21574606
>In a word, a translation by the author will just end up being a sequel, even if it doesnt show as such.
This is an overgeneralisation desu. Take someone like Beckett for example- I think if you purposefully write in a language that is not your own and then translate it back into your native tongue, you’re not going to be retreading familiar ground because the original is already alien to you in some sense. Each language has its own etymological baggage and grammatical/syntactical peculiarities that don’t necessarily correspond to a literal translation in another language. Thus every act of translation is also an act of mutation, and this is especially evident if you’re translating in reverse into your native tongue, because it brings the text into a familiar realm of intelligibility that may generate new meanings entirely removed from the original.

[Anonymous No.21574798]

>>21574769
Yeah I agree with that. The phrase you quote is indeed in a way overstating the fact to make emphasis on the argument.

And literal translations are obviously never accurate, but that doesnt prove or disprove anything.

[Anonymous No.21574909]

>>21574507
Beckett is the go to example.

[Anonymous No.21575046]

>>21571151

[Anonymous No.21575062]

>>21571142
How long would it take me to learn to write entirely in Gaelic

[I V R I • N E M O !!GgBWHLRiayD No.21576453]

Is ok.

[Anonymous No.21576463]

>>21571605
I AM the fluent friend