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... Although, there is one really interesting possibility I failed to account for here. The Indian subcontinent is ancient, and so is its literary tradition. I
by hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
... Although, there is one really interesting possibility I failed to account for here.
The Indian subcontinent is ancient, and so is its literary tradition. It's possible that truly ancient works like the various parts of the Mahabharata genuinely can't be translated at a high enough level of quality - because they actually happened. They are not entirely fictional accounts of a time and place so fundamentally different to our own, that no attempt at a translation within a secular context could work well, because the whole semantic space of modern language is just too divergent from it. It would be like handing a caveman a copy of Accelerando or something. I did know one guy in college who learned Aramaic for a few years years, and eventually recoiled in horror and stopped because this was the conclusion he came to.
- FlyingSnake 1y agoNah man, I’m not aiming for any linguistic purity or any such thing. All I want is to experience the sounds, smells, quirks, slangs and unique things that make up the culture. e.g. when I read „Stasiland “, I knew exactly what Miriam felt. When I read the „Kite runner”, as an ex-kite runner, I felt one with Aamir and Hassan. Linguistic purity reminds me of casteism/accentism which I abhor. I just want to be as close as the original experience as possible, and it maybe my naive thinking that original languages capture that nuance better? However your point about English-Latin-Spanish triumvirate is interesting and may explain your reasoning. Indian works like Mrityunjaya or Godān can easily be read in many Indic languages without any drop of quality. You might be surprised but I’ve actually found German translations of Mahabharata or Tripitaka to be much better then English ones.