!bookworms !classics all the talk today on @kaamrev post about Rangz of Power reminded me what a language nerd Tolkien was, he was particularly fascinated with the Finnish language and mythology which he would use as a base for Quenya.
He went as far as to learn enough finnish to read the darn Kalevala in the original.
Which brings me to translations. Translating is tricky, especially for poetry or books which are famous for their prose because part of their beauty is lost, them there's the issue of "word-by-word" translation or whether to convey the general idea of the text.
What are some books you guys find "untranslatable" so to speak?which translated works you find good and what are some terrible translations you came across?
Shakespeare doesn't translate well in other languages, same with Cervantes and Camões when is translated to English but some annotated translations of Don Quixote do the original justice. I see no point of reading Moby Peepee or Lolita in Portuguese either, lot's of what make those books special will be lost.
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I think greek epic poetry is untranslatable because you cant keep the original syntax and flow since English and ancient Greek have a totally different structure. Keep the syntax and its weird af and barely recognizable as poetry. I have a translation of the illiad which is in blank verse. Certainly not an accurate rendition of epic verse but it does sound very poetic and flow well in English.
Ive read multiple Nietzsche translations and most are kinda the same minus some squabbling over exact words. Most of them get the general ideas down of Twilight of the Idols (the only one ive read partially in German and by read I mean go by word by word with a German to English dictionary and cross reference with multiple translations). My issue is more Kaufman's translator notes which more often then not devolve into pure cope where he uses his authoritative status as translator to deliver Grade A cope. "Uh actually Nietzsche though Master Morality was worse then Slave Morality but he just didn't have time to write it since he thought Slave Morality was more pressing. I know this because I just do okay! Its nice and liberal and not nazi" His whole thought process is based over correcting from the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche to one fully in the opposite direction.
In general I find most of the translation debate to just be opinionated copes. How many cults have tried to claim mainstream bible translations are all 100% wrong so they could sneak in their random doctrine. Or how chuds act like any reference to homosexuality in ancient greek texts was all just liberals mistranslated even though they cant read the original language. In general even the most libtard academic translators (assuming they are actual professionals) tend to do accurate translations its just the interpretations which end up as cope.
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Poetry is the trickiest one, you can get verse with some poetic flow which probably implies alterations, a plain text without verse or some word-by-word attempt which will make no-sense at all.
Lol, bible translations are always drama inducing, many in the US refuse to go with any other that's not the KJV right?
!catholics
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In this house we only use the Minecraft edition
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It's a subgroup of Baptists that are KJV only, but having said that it's easily the most literarily significant and poetic translation in English
@BWC
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Verily, I say unto Thee that the people favoure it for the sounde, which is Olde
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Yeah and even in the grand scheme of things the KJV isn't terrible. Most of the totally wrong translations are imo words unimportant to the core aspects of the bible. KJV I prefer because I think it reads better but Im not reading it for 100% accurate scholarship plus old enough copies keep all the deuterocannon. Im more referring to stuff like the Joesph Smith Bible, a s lightly rewritten KJV bible which adds in stuff to make the mormon conception of priesthood seem more legit or the Jehovah Witness Bible which has a bunch of crazy stuff like Jesus being Archangel Micheal and not God and ect.
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From the very first line, there's already translation drama with major theological implications.
Did God create the heavens and earth from nothing?
Or did something already exist?
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!ifrickinglovescience !physics discuss
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Idk because somewhere around my master's degree I completely lost track of what things are actually physical and which are just mathematical abstractions. Are quantum field fluctuations "something"? Are fields real? Can a singularity exist in real world? I don't fricking know. And neither do we know what actually kickstarted this whole thing in the first place
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Clearly he took the stuff out of the chaos of the quantum foam so it both existed and didn't until it did
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Revised English Bible is low-key the greatest translation, it reads like Tolkein
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It's funny because they'd kicked the Jews out of England (based) before the Kjv translation was made, so nobody really knew Hebrew or Aramaic well, and made an butt translation.
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The old testament of the KJV was translated from the Septuagint, the Ancient Greek translation of the OT instead of the Masoretic text the Jews used.
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The New Testament is in greek
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My favorite is "Nietzsche may rant about race mixing and blonde beasts and how Jews are the root of slave morality but that doesn't mean he's a Nazi!!!"
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I think he probably would have disliked Nazism but more relating to stuff about German culture and modernism then anything Racial or Democratic. But by any modern standard he is 100% a reactionary who opposed liberalism, democracy, and multi culturalism
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None of these words are in the Bible
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My entire Kalevala knowledge comes from Donald Duck comics
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I'm so glad I speak Japanese because I have no idea how you could possibly do a good job translating that shit to English.
On the other hand, I enjoy Russian translated into German a lot. English, not so much.
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Only the phonology for Quenya, the actual language has not etymological relation.
He took the rest from various European and Semitic languages but really straight up invented most words based on what he thought sounded cool.
You do find a few easter eggs though, like Atan/Atani=Man/Men in Quenya and Adan/Edain = Man/Men in Sindarin to Adám = Man in Biblical Hebrew or Eä = All which is and 'ehye (אֶהְיֶה fricking sounds like Eä) which means "I Am" as stated by God to Moses.
Or nar being fire in Quenya and in Arabic.
And certain place names like Tol Eressä being similar to things like Tell Meggido, not equivalent but copying the format. And also things like the Rohirrim or Galadrim sharing the Hebrew method of denoting groups of people.
Sindarin was Welsh and other Celtic languages but the phonology is also shared by Spanish.
Another interesting fact is that he glossed most of the proper and place names from Westron into English making Rohirric sound like Saxons, Dwarves like Scandinavians (Oakenshield/Eikinskjaldi), Hobbits like English and so on. Samwise Gamgee's real name is Banazir Galpsi
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Join ! linguistics!
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If I reread which translation do you recommend? I'd have to even check which copy I have. I'm tilting.
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I read it in Spanish, but I remember there was an English translation some other guy posted here on rdrama which was good.
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Send me the first page of your edition, I'm gonna compare it to the original
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Ok. Worth mentioning even in Spanish is good to have an annotated edition because 17th century Spanish is a tad different and there are many outdated expressions. A fun fact is that Rio-Platense
Spanish conserves some archaisms from that era like "voseo" which completely disappeared in Spain and countries like Mexico.
"Vos tenés" instead of "tu tienes/usted tiene" which is used in modern Spain.
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Grossman was the translator
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You shouldn't read books because of their magical writing.
You read them to rant about why you didn't like them or why reading the author's work in current year is heckin problematic on social media 
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Darn I really wanted to read Don Quixote
Sad to hear it doesn't bode well in translations
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Try Grossman's translation that's the one I found to be the closest, preferably annotated to give some background, even in Spanish the notes help because of the archaisms.
Cervantes is the Spanish equivalent of Shakespeare but even if the prose doesn't translate the storylines and plots are still great on their own. Shakespeare in comparison sucks on it's romance translations.
I kind of feel the same pain with Russian literature though, but there's only so many languages we can learn.
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Is it better in the original Portuguese?
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I'm gonna be honest, I'm not a fan of Camões, but he's rather praised for his style and contributions to the Portuguese language, that's the stuff which won't translate.
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One of my favorite mistranslations is Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human. The title, and the line when used at the end of the book, are translated to No Longer Human, but the Japanese used more accurately translates to "disqualified from being a human." In the context of the story this places much more emphasis on the societal rejection of the main character, while No Longer Human makes it more of an internal struggle, and for the sake of the book the former is far superior.
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More like Lost in your MOM
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