.webp?h=8 "Merry Fistmas!")
!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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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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In this house we only use the Minecraft edition
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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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