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I don't think you're alone in disliking translation 'liberties' , but I don't think most people really like literal translation either. A literal translation o
by serf 9y ago
I don't think you're alone in disliking translation 'liberties' , but I don't think most people really like literal translation either.
A literal translation of many sentences from Japanese to English (and vice-versa) reorders words to the point of gibberish.
Almost every idiom is broken without reinterpretation -- well except for the really good crude ones.
- ethbro 9y agoOr as I saw misattributed to Keynes in a comment here: "It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong." -Carveth Read With humility for one's own skills and respect for the author, there are many times a literal translation would not accomplish the author's intent (in the target language).
- x1798DE 9y agoI don't think anyone would argue for word-level translations without any grammar - that wouldn't even be possible, since there isn't a 1-1 mapping between words in different languages. But for a translation, I think most people want you to do the minimum possible to preserve the original meaning. So no switching "ramen" to "spaghetti" because you think people won't understand.
- snvzz 9y ago> A literal translation of many sentences from Japanese to English (and vice-versa) reorders words to the point of gibberish. To be clear, by not taking liberties what I meant is preserving both meaning and intent. So called localization does often screw with one or the other.