4 ms·

Such words are the nightmares of people who translate fiction. Because if in the original you have "toska", you can't really translate it as "dull ache of the s

Such words are the nightmares of people who translate fiction. Because if in the original you have "toska", you can't really translate it as "dull ache of the soul stemming from longing or pining" as that would surely break the flow of the text. So they might be untranslatable in certain contexts, for sure, and you have to scramble for alternatives which inevitably lose subtle shades of meaning.

dazzawazza 6y ago
Given that the act of reading is lossy, I don't think this matters too much.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  It matters a great deal. For example, Bagheera is female in Russian translations. This breaks the entire notion of Bagheera being an older male friend to Mowgly. This also makes some parts of the books nonsensical. All the characters in Winnie the Pooh represent a group of school boys. When Kanga shows up, it upends their world. In the canonical Russian translation and animation Owl is a fussy old lady. Which reduces all shades of meaning. These are simple works of fiction, and already they are greatly reduced just by the singular gender choices made by translators. And there are dozens to hundreds of such choices per book. Complex books like Too Like Lightning may be even untranslatable entirely because TLL rests on gender ambiguity. Russian has gender even in verbs, so you can see a character's gender even in simple phrases like "I did" which are ambiguous in English. etc. etc. etc.
narag 6y ago
Such words are the nightmares of people who translate fiction. Translators that work dubbing movies have harder constraints and seldom fail to make sense, only when there're wordplays or words that sound similar to others...
- ajuc 6y ago
  They also have much more context to work with. Compare "Fuck" said with mad, resigned and amazed voice. It's 3 different words in some languages. Or compare a line "Our hero heard someone crying 'I loved her' from the crowd". In some languages depending what grammatical gender is the person shouting the word ending in 'love' is different. English books often skip that information, so the translator has to deduce or ask the author who was shouting that line. In a movie you know because you can see that person or hear the voice.
  - viceroyalbean 6y ago
    I remember reading one example of this in an interview with the Swedish translator of the Harry Potter books. At some point a grandmother (I believe Neville's) is mentioned. In Swedish, it is impossible (at least while sounding remotely natural) to say "grandmother" without specifying whether it's the maternal or paternal grandmother. The translator had to just guess, and ended up being wrong when more context was given in a later book.
    - JoeSmithson 6y ago
      I believe it's also the case that there is no word for "uncle" in Swedish. This makes more sense to me because your relationship to your mother's brother is actually meaningfully different to your mother's sister's husband.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  They seldom fail to make sense, but they sound unnatural 99% of the time.
- fergonco 6y ago
  On the other side translating a book would have much more text than a film. That would increase the chances of running into difficult translations.
- Agentlien 6y ago
  That is very generous. Looking at Swedish subtitles of Hollywood movies I often cringe at idioms translated word by word rather than to common Swedish equivalents. These make no sense if you don't happen to know the English already. When watching dubbed things (which in Swedish means exclusively children's shows) I often hear things which make little sense until I suddenly realise there's an English sentence with similar structure that would make sense in this context. edit: In other words, translations often fail to make sense when poorly done, and a lot of them are.
  - narag 6y ago
    In Spanish, most of the excesive literal translations happened 50 or 100 years ago, so they're part of the language now. Noboby blinks when somebody says "my name is" translated word by word. It used to be extremely unnatural. Sometimes I enable English subtitles keeping the dubbed Spanish audio and it's often well done. There is very talented people working on the translations, giving the right tone to conversations.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Making sense != conveying all the possible meanings (or the main meanings)
- rswail 6y ago
  I remember watching, in a youth hostel back in the 80s, an Aussie movie dubbed into German. My German was minimal, but when a swagman got out of a semi that had just given him a lift, he said "Danke Comarade" and I realized that he said "Thanks mate" which has greater connotations and meaning than just a thank you.
- empath75 6y ago
  They also aren't translations, a lot of the time, in the sense that they express the same meaning as the original text. Often they're simply replacements that are compatible with the action on the screen.
  - narag 6y ago
    Most of the time the meaning of the original text is to be a filling compatible with the action on the screen.
zimpenfish 6y ago
> you have to scramble for alternatives which inevitably lose subtle shades of meaning That would be "difficult to translate", then, not "untranslatable", no? As for breaking the flow of the text, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to do that anyway translating Russian to English.
- ivanbakel 6y ago
  >That would be "difficult to translate", then, not "untranslatable", no? Where would you draw the line? No culture has a concept which is literally unexplainable to any other. Translators could potentially give meaning-for-meaning accurate translations if it were desirable, or possible, to give each word a paragraph of qualifiers and contexts. But translators are restricted to at least trying to preserve the structure of the translated work, and for words that means trying to pick a one- or two-word substitute. Some words just don't have an accurate substitute. You can easily pick translations which are "not wrong", but none would be correct. What would you call those words, if not "untranslatable"?
- ajuc 6y ago
  Word puns are sometimes impossible to translate (at least without teaching the other person the part of language it depends on). Example: A Pole, a German and a Russian meet the devil. He locks each one of them in a cell, gives them two small marbles each and tells them they have a month to impress him with them, or he'll eat them otherwise. So he comes back after a month and sees that the German's cell is full of complicated mathematical formulas and one marble is perfectly balanced on top of the other. He nods his head and moves on to the Russian's cell to see him doing one-handed pushups while juggling the marbles with the other hand. The devil nods again and moves to the Pole's cell, only to see that he lost one marble and broke the other one. Is it funny? Because it's pretty good in Polish and I don't know how to translate it withotu longwinded explanation. The problem is that the word "zepsuć" used for "breaking the marble" means "to spoil" or "to make something nonfunctional without destroying it physically". In English "break" is overloaded and people assume other meaning. So the Pole in the joke managed to make the marble stop doing what marbles do without damaging it.
  - 6y ago
rgoulter 6y ago
Sure. But, I enjoy prozd's short sketch on "official subs vs fansubs" in this regard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo (It demonstrates translation where an 'official' one is lossy, but the fansub tries to be more faithful).

dazzawazza 6y ago

Given that the act of reading is lossy, I don't think this matters too much.

dmitriid 6y ago
It matters a great deal. For example, Bagheera is female in Russian translations. This breaks the entire notion of Bagheera being an older male friend to Mowgly. This also makes some parts of the books nonsensical. All the characters in Winnie the Pooh represent a group of school boys. When Kanga shows up, it upends their world. In the canonical Russian translation and animation Owl is a fussy old lady. Which reduces all shades of meaning. These are simple works of fiction, and already they are greatly reduced just by the singular gender choices made by translators. And there are dozens to hundreds of such choices per book. Complex books like Too Like Lightning may be even untranslatable entirely because TLL rests on gender ambiguity. Russian has gender even in verbs, so you can see a character's gender even in simple phrases like "I did" which are ambiguous in English. etc. etc. etc.

narag 6y ago

Such words are the nightmares of people who translate fiction. Translators that work dubbing movies have harder constraints and seldom fail to make sense, only when there're wordplays or words that sound similar to others...

ajuc 6y ago
They also have much more context to work with. Compare "Fuck" said with mad, resigned and amazed voice. It's 3 different words in some languages. Or compare a line "Our hero heard someone crying 'I loved her' from the crowd". In some languages depending what grammatical gender is the person shouting the word ending in 'love' is different. English books often skip that information, so the translator has to deduce or ask the author who was shouting that line. In a movie you know because you can see that person or hear the voice.
- viceroyalbean 6y ago
  I remember reading one example of this in an interview with the Swedish translator of the Harry Potter books. At some point a grandmother (I believe Neville's) is mentioned. In Swedish, it is impossible (at least while sounding remotely natural) to say "grandmother" without specifying whether it's the maternal or paternal grandmother. The translator had to just guess, and ended up being wrong when more context was given in a later book.
  - JoeSmithson 6y ago
    I believe it's also the case that there is no word for "uncle" in Swedish. This makes more sense to me because your relationship to your mother's brother is actually meaningfully different to your mother's sister's husband.
Semaphor 6y ago
They seldom fail to make sense, but they sound unnatural 99% of the time.
fergonco 6y ago
On the other side translating a book would have much more text than a film. That would increase the chances of running into difficult translations.
Agentlien 6y ago
That is very generous. Looking at Swedish subtitles of Hollywood movies I often cringe at idioms translated word by word rather than to common Swedish equivalents. These make no sense if you don't happen to know the English already. When watching dubbed things (which in Swedish means exclusively children's shows) I often hear things which make little sense until I suddenly realise there's an English sentence with similar structure that would make sense in this context. edit: In other words, translations often fail to make sense when poorly done, and a lot of them are.
- narag 6y ago
  In Spanish, most of the excesive literal translations happened 50 or 100 years ago, so they're part of the language now. Noboby blinks when somebody says "my name is" translated word by word. It used to be extremely unnatural. Sometimes I enable English subtitles keeping the dubbed Spanish audio and it's often well done. There is very talented people working on the translations, giving the right tone to conversations.
raverbashing 6y ago
Making sense != conveying all the possible meanings (or the main meanings)
rswail 6y ago
I remember watching, in a youth hostel back in the 80s, an Aussie movie dubbed into German. My German was minimal, but when a swagman got out of a semi that had just given him a lift, he said "Danke Comarade" and I realized that he said "Thanks mate" which has greater connotations and meaning than just a thank you.
empath75 6y ago
They also aren't translations, a lot of the time, in the sense that they express the same meaning as the original text. Often they're simply replacements that are compatible with the action on the screen.
- narag 6y ago
  Most of the time the meaning of the original text is to be a filling compatible with the action on the screen.

zimpenfish 6y ago

> you have to scramble for alternatives which inevitably lose subtle shades of meaning That would be "difficult to translate", then, not "untranslatable", no? As for breaking the flow of the text, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to do that anyway translating Russian to English.

ivanbakel 6y ago
>That would be "difficult to translate", then, not "untranslatable", no? Where would you draw the line? No culture has a concept which is literally unexplainable to any other. Translators could potentially give meaning-for-meaning accurate translations if it were desirable, or possible, to give each word a paragraph of qualifiers and contexts. But translators are restricted to at least trying to preserve the structure of the translated work, and for words that means trying to pick a one- or two-word substitute. Some words just don't have an accurate substitute. You can easily pick translations which are "not wrong", but none would be correct. What would you call those words, if not "untranslatable"?
ajuc 6y ago
Word puns are sometimes impossible to translate (at least without teaching the other person the part of language it depends on). Example: A Pole, a German and a Russian meet the devil. He locks each one of them in a cell, gives them two small marbles each and tells them they have a month to impress him with them, or he'll eat them otherwise. So he comes back after a month and sees that the German's cell is full of complicated mathematical formulas and one marble is perfectly balanced on top of the other. He nods his head and moves on to the Russian's cell to see him doing one-handed pushups while juggling the marbles with the other hand. The devil nods again and moves to the Pole's cell, only to see that he lost one marble and broke the other one. Is it funny? Because it's pretty good in Polish and I don't know how to translate it withotu longwinded explanation. The problem is that the word "zepsuć" used for "breaking the marble" means "to spoil" or "to make something nonfunctional without destroying it physically". In English "break" is overloaded and people assume other meaning. So the Pole in the joke managed to make the marble stop doing what marbles do without damaging it.
- 6y ago

rgoulter 6y ago

Sure. But, I enjoy prozd's short sketch on "official subs vs fansubs" in this regard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo (It demonstrates translation where an 'official' one is lossy, but the fansub tries to be more faithful).