I was also tickled by the mention of Waley I have a soft spot for Waley because of one of those six-degrees-of-separation things, having once lived next door to his widow, but my impression is that he was the first to translate/discuss many Chinese and Japanese texts and that there are now enough other people conversant in the relevant languages and cultures that he can be criticized as he once couldn't be.
it's really just such a tired argument. I'm mostly disturbed (at second- or third-hand, so maybe I shouldn't be going on about it) by translators who say "well, this particle is in the Chinese so it should be in the English because it's untranslatable!" or "well, Japanese doesn't have articles, so it's wrong to put an article into this sentence" or the like. I wish people who translate for others in public (as opposed to for fun on their own account) could be held to a certain standard of professionalism (and maybe that makes me a snob and a gatekeeper, but...).
If you do go read the Zen Cho stories, let me know what you think! (Both of the stories themselves and of their translatability or otherwise.) I didn't like her Sorcerer to the Crown series nearly as much as her shorter stuff, because the novels don't have the Malaysian English which I feel like is her great strength...
readability in particular is a dimension that translation studies sometimes ignores a little too much. Oh yeah, I didn't even think of the more literal meaning of readability with regard to subtitles--whether the viewer can read in the time allowed! Yet another issue, especially as footnotes are harder to slip in...
(Part of the whole difficulty is, does one translate for people like, you know, all of us around here, who find all the language stuff fascinating in itself, or for people who just want to read the damn book or watch the damn show without thinking about the language as language? Both valid in their ways...)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-04-09 11:48 am (UTC)I have a soft spot for Waley because of one of those six-degrees-of-separation things, having once lived next door to his widow, but my impression is that he was the first to translate/discuss many Chinese and Japanese texts and that there are now enough other people conversant in the relevant languages and cultures that he can be criticized as he once couldn't be.
it's really just such a tired argument.
I'm mostly disturbed (at second- or third-hand, so maybe I shouldn't be going on about it) by translators who say "well, this particle is in the Chinese so it should be in the English because it's untranslatable!" or "well, Japanese doesn't have articles, so it's wrong to put an article into this sentence" or the like. I wish people who translate for others in public (as opposed to for fun on their own account) could be held to a certain standard of professionalism (and maybe that makes me a snob and a gatekeeper, but...).
If you do go read the Zen Cho stories, let me know what you think! (Both of the stories themselves and of their translatability or otherwise.) I didn't like her Sorcerer to the Crown series nearly as much as her shorter stuff, because the novels don't have the Malaysian English which I feel like is her great strength...
readability in particular is a dimension that translation studies sometimes ignores a little too much.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think of the more literal meaning of readability with regard to subtitles--whether the viewer can read in the time allowed! Yet another issue, especially as footnotes are harder to slip in...
(Part of the whole difficulty is, does one translate for people like, you know, all of us around here, who find all the language stuff fascinating in itself, or for people who just want to read the damn book or watch the damn show without thinking about the language as language? Both valid in their ways...)