This is pure genius. I mean it.
What he finds so odd about bad translations is that this is not the normal way that English works. Normally English isn’t shy at all about taking from some other language any words it needs but doesn’t have. The list goes on and on and on. Cafe, kindergarten, siesta, sushi, gestalt, menage a trois, mafia, glasnost, apparatchik, kowtow, klutz, shtick, gloaming.
English has never been shy about this practice at other times, why do translators of poetry shy away from it? If we have the word, or an economical way of expressing what that word means, fine, translate it. But if we don’t have that word, and don’t have a good way of expressing all that that word means, then we should recognize that it’s better to leave that word untranslated and include appendix information to explain why the word went untranslated.
In this way the language would grow to include these words and future translations could omit the appendix information. We’d learn it. and then we’d have it to use forever.
What he finds so odd about bad translations is that this is not the normal way that English works. Normally English isn’t shy at all about taking from some other language any words it needs but doesn’t have. The list goes on and on and on. Cafe, kindergarten, siesta, sushi, gestalt, menage a trois, mafia, glasnost, apparatchik, kowtow, klutz, shtick, gloaming.
English has never been shy about this practice at other times, why do translators of poetry shy away from it? If we have the word, or an economical way of expressing what that word means, fine, translate it. But if we don’t have that word, and don’t have a good way of expressing all that that word means, then we should recognize that it’s better to leave that word untranslated and include appendix information to explain why the word went untranslated.
In this way the language would grow to include these words and future translations could omit the appendix information. We’d learn it. and then we’d have it to use forever.
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