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If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices wh

If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?” Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information. Any comparison of languages which tries to evaluate which languages are more compact has to work with some assumptions about what information should be conveyed. A statistical distribution of language-independent messages. But when you choose a distribution, you’re encoding your biases. Not saying that language efficiency is a bunk concept, just that it’s a thorny, difficult concept to quantify. Same is true of data compression algorithms—there is no such thing as an absolute scale for Kolmogorov complexity, for the same reasons.

bombcar 3y ago
It’s hard enough to translate when there’s one meaning - but good writers often use multiple meaning of the same words - either for deeper meaning or for humor or other layered meanings. That’s why the translations of Asterix are so impressive.
- mbg721 3y ago
  The Spanish dubs of the Simpsons have a similarly good reputation.
scarmig 3y ago
> Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information. There's an essay I enjoyed by Douglas Hofstadter which is all about this, though from an artistic POV without much (any?) information science. Translator, Trader. The title itself is a fun bit of translational wordplay on "traduttore, traditore."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
magnat 3y ago
> Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information "Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful."
ekidd 3y ago
> If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?” When translating for fun, I've often run into a choice between: - Preserving the author's meaning as literally as possible. - Preserving the author's style. A translation can be literally very accurate, while destroying everything that made the original work charming. Or it might preserve the feel and the flavor of the original work, but skim over a lot of the details. A really good translation captures more of both, with fewer trade-offs. Jorge Luis Borges encouraged his translators to improve upon his original work, if possible. He worked extensively with Di Giovanni, one of his translators, debating the best way to capture certain phrases in English: https://medium.com/@michael.marcus/dear-mr-borges-which-translation-should-i-read-c132acf994ac https://medium.com/@michael.marcus/dear-mr-borges-which-tran... His preference was almost always to capture the "feel" of the work, rather than a strictly literal translation. I have an odd book, which contains three copies of the same story: An original in English, a French translation, and then a translation back into English by a new translator. The French version definitely loses something, and the second English version loses a bit more. But in the second English version, there is an occasional delightful turn of phrase, something that's briefly better than the original version. Translation is hard.
js2 3y ago
For example, the closing dialogue of the French movie À bout de souffle ("Out of breath" but given the English title Breathless) is difficult to translate to English because of the ambiguous use of "dégueulasse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathless_(1960_film)#Closing_dialogue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathless_(1960_film)#Closing...
saalweachter 3y ago
Digging into "She said goodbye too many times before" versus "She said goodbye too many times", the "before" in the first implies that She is saying goodbye now. I'm not sure if the Latin translation as it is captures that, or if you'd go for something more like "valedīxisse nimium valedīxit", "she said goodbye having said goodbye too much"; I kind of like that because then you're saying goodbye twice in the same line.
- alcover 3y ago
  > She is saying goodbye now. Exactly (or at the time). Many submissions here attain shortness by eliding this important precision.

bombcar 3y ago

It’s hard enough to translate when there’s one meaning - but good writers often use multiple meaning of the same words - either for deeper meaning or for humor or other layered meanings. That’s why the translations of Asterix are so impressive.

mbg721 3y ago
The Spanish dubs of the Simpsons have a similarly good reputation.

scarmig 3y ago

> Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information. There's an essay I enjoyed by Douglas Hofstadter which is all about this, though from an artistic POV without much (any?) information science. Translator, Trader. The title itself is a fun bit of translational wordplay on "traduttore, traditore."

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

magnat 3y ago

> Translation is a process which both erases information and introduces new information "Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful."

ekidd 3y ago

> If you translate it back into English, “she had said goodbye too much”, it’s clear that the real question is, “did the author mean something by those choices which the translation obliterated?” When translating for fun, I've often run into a choice between: - Preserving the author's meaning as literally as possible. - Preserving the author's style. A translation can be literally very accurate, while destroying everything that made the original work charming. Or it might preserve the feel and the flavor of the original work, but skim over a lot of the details. A really good translation captures more of both, with fewer trade-offs. Jorge Luis Borges encouraged his translators to improve upon his original work, if possible. He worked extensively with Di Giovanni, one of his translators, debating the best way to capture certain phrases in English: https://medium.com/@michael.marcus/dear-mr-borges-which-translation-should-i-read-c132acf994ac https://medium.com/@michael.marcus/dear-mr-borges-which-tran... His preference was almost always to capture the "feel" of the work, rather than a strictly literal translation. I have an odd book, which contains three copies of the same story: An original in English, a French translation, and then a translation back into English by a new translator. The French version definitely loses something, and the second English version loses a bit more. But in the second English version, there is an occasional delightful turn of phrase, something that's briefly better than the original version. Translation is hard.

js2 3y ago

For example, the closing dialogue of the French movie À bout de souffle ("Out of breath" but given the English title Breathless) is difficult to translate to English because of the ambiguous use of "dégueulasse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathless_(1960_film)#Closing_dialogue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathless_(1960_film)#Closing...

saalweachter 3y ago

Digging into "She said goodbye too many times before" versus "She said goodbye too many times", the "before" in the first implies that She is saying goodbye now. I'm not sure if the Latin translation as it is captures that, or if you'd go for something more like "valedīxisse nimium valedīxit", "she said goodbye having said goodbye too much"; I kind of like that because then you're saying goodbye twice in the same line.

alcover 3y ago
> She is saying goodbye now. Exactly (or at the time). Many submissions here attain shortness by eliding this important precision.