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There's a certain reluctance to translate when you almost-know the language. But here's a question: how many more centuries until we will have to translate? I

by retrac 2y ago

There's a certain reluctance to translate when you almost-know the language. But here's a question: how many more centuries until we will have to translate? I figure less than the 400 years now separating us from Shakespeare. Rabelais is probably more like modern French than Shakespeare is like modern English. But maybe because those are novels, and closer to typical prose overall, there are translations of his works into modern French, which are more readily accepted. We do usually modernize Shakespeare's spelling. The gap without that is even larger: "...borne before an euerlaſting Iudge, from whence no paſſenger euer retur'nd, the vndiſcouered country, at whoſe ſight the happy smile, and the accurſed damn'd". Changing that maybe makes it seem more like modern English than it was. How much can you update spelling and such, before it starts becoming a translation? Also, am I the only one whose Shakespeare textbooks in high school, had more footnotes than actual Shakespeare on some pages? It kind of sucks the fun out of it when even the dirty jokes need to be explained.

zoky 2y ago
> But here's a question: how many more centuries until we will have to translate? It’s not clear that we ever will have to. Chaucer wrote a mere 200 years before Shakespeare, and would have been incomprehensible in the latter’s time. The widespread development of printing put a huge brake on the evolution of language. Arguably, the Internet is having an even stronger influence, turning English into a global lingua franca the likes of which the world has not seen since the Roman Empire, or possibly even before that. Also, more and more people are educated throughout the world, and English is taught in a fairly consistent manner everywhere. Writing, consistent and universal education, and global dominance are all factors that work against the development of a language. Yes, new words and slang terms are being adopted constantly, and perhaps just as many are falling out of use, but overall the meaning of a sentence spoken today would be easy enough for a speaker from the 1800s to understand, and there’s no reason to believe it will be any different for a speaker from the 2300s.
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Affric 2y ago
Point of information: we don’t have a Shakespeare manuscript. We have folios and quartos. Beyond that I find the example with the long s perfectly readable. Agree that pointing out the dirty jokes ruins them.

by retrac 2y ago

zoky 2y ago

> But here's a question: how many more centuries until we will have to translate? It’s not clear that we ever will have to. Chaucer wrote a mere 200 years before Shakespeare, and would have been incomprehensible in the latter’s time. The widespread development of printing put a huge brake on the evolution of language. Arguably, the Internet is having an even stronger influence, turning English into a global lingua franca the likes of which the world has not seen since the Roman Empire, or possibly even before that. Also, more and more people are educated throughout the world, and English is taught in a fairly consistent manner everywhere. Writing, consistent and universal education, and global dominance are all factors that work against the development of a language. Yes, new words and slang terms are being adopted constantly, and perhaps just as many are falling out of use, but overall the meaning of a sentence spoken today would be easy enough for a speaker from the 1800s to understand, and there’s no reason to believe it will be any different for a speaker from the 2300s.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Affric 2y ago

Point of information: we don’t have a Shakespeare manuscript. We have folios and quartos. Beyond that I find the example with the long s perfectly readable. Agree that pointing out the dirty jokes ruins them.