Category: Translation quandaries

Above you see Roland Hampe’s 1979 translation of the Odyssey into German. A very close translation would go something like this: Tell me, Muse, about the man, the much-turned, who was repeatedly / cast away after he destroyed the holy stronghold of Troy / he saw settlements of many people and learned their nature /… Continue reading Odyssey comparison (D/E)

In conventional parlance, professional translations exist on a spectrum from “close” to “free.” A close translation reproduces the structure and diction of the original as accurately as possible in correct English. A free translation is one where the translator has taken more liberties. What is the difference between “close” and “literal”? A “literal” translation has… Continue reading Close, Free, and Literal

Hey, entire world. I’m really sorry translations can’t be perfect. And by that I don’t mean translators are bound to make a few mistakes, though of course that’s also true. I mean no translation will ever be exactly the same text or give you exactly the same experience as the original. Think you’ve read War… Continue reading Sorry, everyone

In this post, I discussed whether to decline German adjectives when you use them in an English sentence. I don’t, but here’s somebody doing it on the Wikipedia page for Leo von König: He was not well thought of by Adolf Hitler, however, and his works were removed from the “Großen Deutschen Kunstausstellung” at the… Continue reading More German adjective endings in English

In Brideshead Revisited, Cordelia Flyte returns from her long sojourn in war-torn Spain and the narrator tells us: “She looked more than her twenty-six years; hard living had roughened her; constant intercourse in a foreign tongue had worn away the nuances of speech; she straddled a little as she sat by the fire, and when… Continue reading Practice makes worse

While doing research for a project, I came across this 1997 review of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s novel Petrolio . It was amusing, and since I’m from the future, I can answer this question: Is there any chance that, with the alleged collapse of Communism in the Western world, no one will ever again dismiss his… Continue reading Under the lime trees

This morning someone on my local NPR station said that English is a very implicit language, while American Sign Language is a very explicit language. What the heck does that mean? The speaker, who interprets into ASL at stage productions, cited the example of translating the phrase “a cosmopolitan city”: “Well, you can finger-spell ‘cosmopolitan,’… Continue reading Warning: explicit language