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Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... I wholeheartedly disagree with: "I would argue that the translator serves the author and the original t

Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... I wholeheartedly disagree with: "I would argue that the translator serves the author and the original text. Period." I think it should be pretty obvious that a translator servers primarily their readers, specifically non-native speakers who want to read a work without learning a new language. Which then creates the problem of what do you leave out in a translation? Because you can go nuts trying to keep every syntactic nuance, but then you lose the forest for the trees - the text has no flow for the reader, it becomes hard work where it wasn't originally and the overall experience is flawed. Or you can be faithful to the broad strokes of the work, the essence of it, while changing many of the finer details to achieve it. I think both methods can serve a purpose, but they need to do so clearly and consistently. It's a little like trying to draw a 3D object in 2D - you can only show a slice at a time and no matter what you do, you are forced to make serious omissions. So a translator should do this mindfully. Discounting other approaches feels a little smarmy and pointless.

danso 10y ago
I think it's a good topic for HN. Even those focused on programming can appreciate the topic of translation between computer languages, which is something that is non-trivial but likely much, much easier than translating between human languages. This is something I wish we'd been taught in high school, or even college. For the most part, the idea that translation can be highly subjective seems glossed over: > It goes without saying that translation is an impossible task, fraught with pitfalls, and that the result can never be more than an approximation.
Pamar 10y ago
Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... Godel, Escher, Bach had a whole chapter on translation, and of course the topic keep cropping up after the specific chapter. So if you agree that Hofstadter's work can be discussed on HN, than translation should be ok.
- nereye 10y ago
  Hofstadter also wrote a whole book on the subject ([0]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot
Chinjut 10y ago
> Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... This sort of comment pops up anytime an article on anything other than straight-up apps/coding/business/whatnot is posted, but the answer is always the same: Anything of interest to Hacker News readers belongs on Hacker News. And this sort of thing is of interest to many Hacker News readers.
- derefr 10y ago
  No, this is not the criterion. US politics, for an example, is "of interest to Hacker News readers", but makes for awful (and mostly pointless) discussion, so it's discouraged as a topic. In fact, "anything of interest to [the people who form the community]" is an inherently meaningless rule: as things are posted that "go beyond" the interests of the community, the site will begin to attract a new audience that is interested in those things, leading to a community shift or dilution. Such a setup can make sense in a closed community, but not in an open one. The real spirit at the core of the HN content guidelines, I think, is something like this: we want posts where reading them evokes the hacker mindset in people. AI? Cryptography? Engineering? Great. "Lean startup" entrepreneuralist exploration? Sure. Cat photos, gender-studies rants, brand movements? Not really. It's actually a rather strict guideline; a large number of things on the front page at any given moment aren't really "HN material", as can be seen from the low quality of the discussions they provoke. The guidelines are enforced with a rather light hand, though. It's hard to convince a person currently in possession of An Opinion that they'll probably regret the five hours they wasted in that thread picking apart e.g. the pros and cons of iPhones lacking headphone jacks. Easy enough to convince them afterward, but very hard at the time. (I've always found that the best forums have "benevolent dictators" who are willing to kill these conversational vortexes and then take the heat for them. pg was this person at HN's start; but now HN is far more of a standard "just moderation, no emceeing" forum.)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Chinjut 10y ago
    The dismissive mention of "gender-studies rants" as canonically not fit for Hacker News disappoints, but does not surprise, me.
jnbiche 10y ago
> Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... Second only to "HN is becoming Reddit", or possibly "Go ahead and downvote me, but..." as the most boring comment to read on HN (I plead guilty to polluting the comments with the last one on more than one occasion).

danso 10y ago

I think it's a good topic for HN. Even those focused on programming can appreciate the topic of translation between computer languages, which is something that is non-trivial but likely much, much easier than translating between human languages. This is something I wish we'd been taught in high school, or even college. For the most part, the idea that translation can be highly subjective seems glossed over: > It goes without saying that translation is an impossible task, fraught with pitfalls, and that the result can never be more than an approximation.

Pamar 10y ago

Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... Godel, Escher, Bach had a whole chapter on translation, and of course the topic keep cropping up after the specific chapter. So if you agree that Hofstadter's work can be discussed on HN, than translation should be ok.

nereye 10y ago
Hofstadter also wrote a whole book on the subject ([0]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot

Chinjut 10y ago

> Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... This sort of comment pops up anytime an article on anything other than straight-up apps/coding/business/whatnot is posted, but the answer is always the same: Anything of interest to Hacker News readers belongs on Hacker News. And this sort of thing is of interest to many Hacker News readers.

derefr 10y ago
No, this is not the criterion. US politics, for an example, is "of interest to Hacker News readers", but makes for awful (and mostly pointless) discussion, so it's discouraged as a topic. In fact, "anything of interest to [the people who form the community]" is an inherently meaningless rule: as things are posted that "go beyond" the interests of the community, the site will begin to attract a new audience that is interested in those things, leading to a community shift or dilution. Such a setup can make sense in a closed community, but not in an open one. The real spirit at the core of the HN content guidelines, I think, is something like this: we want posts where reading them evokes the hacker mindset in people. AI? Cryptography? Engineering? Great. "Lean startup" entrepreneuralist exploration? Sure. Cat photos, gender-studies rants, brand movements? Not really. It's actually a rather strict guideline; a large number of things on the front page at any given moment aren't really "HN material", as can be seen from the low quality of the discussions they provoke. The guidelines are enforced with a rather light hand, though. It's hard to convince a person currently in possession of An Opinion that they'll probably regret the five hours they wasted in that thread picking apart e.g. the pros and cons of iPhones lacking headphone jacks. Easy enough to convince them afterward, but very hard at the time. (I've always found that the best forums have "benevolent dictators" who are willing to kill these conversational vortexes and then take the heat for them. pg was this person at HN's start; but now HN is far more of a standard "just moderation, no emceeing" forum.)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Chinjut 10y ago
  The dismissive mention of "gender-studies rants" as canonically not fit for Hacker News disappoints, but does not surprise, me.

jnbiche 10y ago

> Not exactly sure why this is a Hacker News thing but... Second only to "HN is becoming Reddit", or possibly "Go ahead and downvote me, but..." as the most boring comment to read on HN (I plead guilty to polluting the comments with the last one on more than one occasion).