4 ms·

Having "translated" a book of Urdu ghazals in college, I feel weirdly positioned to comment. First, there are a ton of opinions about what it means to translat

Having "translated" a book of Urdu ghazals in college, I feel weirdly positioned to comment. First, there are a ton of opinions about what it means to translate poetry, but it certain is transformative and there isn't any point in avoiding that. It becomes a series of decisions about what to retain, what to discard and even what to elevate or create. Many people think "adding" anything is counter to the goal of translation, but what is the goal? You can read a transliteration and understand concepts, you can read various translations and triangulate meaning, you can speak the original language and grow up with the author (or be the author!) And none of it will help produce an accurate translation. So what's the goal? To transmit some germ of the source material, to my thinking. Haikus are equally (or even moreso) impossible. What gets missed in most haiku translation is the turn of phrase, where a single word can hold two meanings in balance. Without it. A fundamental aspect of haiku is simply not there. Yet people still read translated haikus. For me, I dropped the rhyming scheme completely. Yes, you lose musicality and the rhythm of poem. But you can better maintain the concepts and emotion and not have to fight against the boundaries of the language.

Velorivox 1y ago
The show "boys over flowers" is translated from 花より男子, ostensibly a correct translation. But 男子 (boys) is a homophone of 団子 (a sweet dumpling) and the entire phrase 花より団子 is an aphorism for preferring practicality over aesthetics. Did you understand that? Of course. Yet, a joke that has to be explained loses something of itself. Weirdly, I am fluent in Japanese, Urdu, and English. I believe that while translations have their value, they always fail to do justice – even when translated by the author! A poem is, like a joke, largely about what it affects in the audience, and such an evanescent quality is nigh impossible to preserve completely in translation, or even in a retelling. This is why I was rather upset when Youtube began silently auto-translating audio for me with no indication of it not being the original audio (it's especially bad if you look at shorts and are multilingual...you could easily mistake what was a catchy Japanese song for English AI slop).
- colanderman 1y ago
  > translations […] always fail to do justice I agree with you, yet sometimes, serendipity prevails, and a frying pan becomes a drying pan. [1] [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ill-use-my-trusty-frying-pan-as-a-drying-pan https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ill-use-my-trusty-frying-pan-...
  - Velorivox 1y ago
    That must be what they call dry humor, also known as deadpan.

Velorivox 1y ago

The show "boys over flowers" is translated from 花より男子, ostensibly a correct translation. But 男子 (boys) is a homophone of 団子 (a sweet dumpling) and the entire phrase 花より団子 is an aphorism for preferring practicality over aesthetics. Did you understand that? Of course. Yet, a joke that has to be explained loses something of itself. Weirdly, I am fluent in Japanese, Urdu, and English. I believe that while translations have their value, they always fail to do justice – even when translated by the author! A poem is, like a joke, largely about what it affects in the audience, and such an evanescent quality is nigh impossible to preserve completely in translation, or even in a retelling. This is why I was rather upset when Youtube began silently auto-translating audio for me with no indication of it not being the original audio (it's especially bad if you look at shorts and are multilingual...you could easily mistake what was a catchy Japanese song for English AI slop).

colanderman 1y ago
> translations […] always fail to do justice I agree with you, yet sometimes, serendipity prevails, and a frying pan becomes a drying pan. [1] [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ill-use-my-trusty-frying-pan-as-a-drying-pan https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ill-use-my-trusty-frying-pan-...
- Velorivox 1y ago
  That must be what they call dry humor, also known as deadpan.