!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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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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