Kevin's Watch

Poetry, as the old adage has it, is what is lost in translation - but I have a thinking that perhaps it goes even further than that. I think it is Art, altogether, that cannot make the transition from one language, or even culture, to another.

I recently tried to buy a copy of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, more commonly known as The Hunchback of etc, and was surprised at how difficult I actually found it to be. The problem is I don't speak french. The reviews I read in respect of the various translations available made it clear that the reading experience could go from being one of intense pleasure to unremitting misery depending upon the translation you chose. Translations tended to be old ones, done a hundred years ago or thereabouts, or ones done in the last few decades, with not much in-between. By and large it seemed to be the modern ones that we could tolerate, rather than the older more formal affairs.

When I read Les Miserables, translated by Norman Denny I was staggered by the scope and power of the work as one would be, but also at the beauty and richness of the text. Pushkin's Eugene Onegin on the other hand, I'd found ......how can I say.......flat, and this from a written that the Russians hold in every bit as much respect as we do Shakespeare. No doubt whatever it was that makes the latter work a great piece of Art had simply not survived the translation, where in the former, the aesthetic merit of the work had somehow survived. Or had it?

I began to wonder whether the rich and beautiful text that inspired me to such heights in my reading of Les Miserables, was not actually that of Hugo, but that the art of the work that I had read was actually and completely all that of the translator Norman Denny, simply hanging on the frame of Hugo's tale......and the more I think about it the more likely that this seems to me to be the case. Art, aesthetic power....... to but it simply beauty, can simply not translate. It is simply recreated, or more correctly created afresh, by the second artist who wraps himself around the framework of ideas that the original work gives him. Sure, he balances literal word for word translation with authorial intent and also with aesthetic transference as far as is possible - but the final product is in terms of its success or failure as a piece of Art, entirely down to him or her. In the above examples Denny achieved it, the other didn't.

Now all this is easy enough to understand when we consider poetry or prose - we need that interlocutor to render the meaning accessable to us, but what about painting or sculpture - or indeed music? Surely in the case of these we're not going to need a translator in the same sense. I'm not so sure about this however. I think in the case of say, looking at a work of aboriginal art, we are effectively performing the translation ourselves within our own minds - and in the main doing it badly. The image is surviving, the Art is not. No matter how the much we look at the lines and dots of dream-time paintings, they remain a mystery to us. They hint at an aesthetic, a deep rich beauty that is forever denied to those not raised in the tradition - but which can never survive the translation to the untutored mind.

This of course begs the question as to whether the Art can be learned, as I might learn to get the aesthetic of Hugo's original were I to learn to read in french. I'd guess to a degree the answer would be yes - but I think it would be a very limited degree. I simply don't think one could perform the mental gymnastics necessary to unload oneself of a lifetimes cultural baggage sufficiently to absorb the aboriginal tradition that would be necessary for the aesthetic to unfold - not to the extent that it does for a native. In fact I even question whether the full aesthetic force of a work read in what is not your first language - or at least one that you have learned in translation as opposed to one that you have adsorbed since birth, since it is possible to learn two languages side by side as you develop - is achievable.

Any thoughts or stories on this subject?

Translation is an amazing thing.

The first example that springs to my mind was this:
I was told that in the original language, the Proverbs in the book of Proverbs had more "snap" to them.
The guy who loved to say that would cite this proverb as one that maintains some of the "snap" that doesn't usually translate:

"A rich man's wealth is his strong city,
and like a high wall... in his own imagination."

(ellipses are mine. also, I may have copy-pasted my favorite translation, and then added the word "own" because it is in many other translations.)

There is like a chapter of a book called "Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes" online that has some really wild examples I love of how wildly things can fail to translate... I want to see if there are any good ones that speak to the poetry thing you mentioned! If I have time!
The chapter online is here:
https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-s ... pture.html

*hoping it is not a super-non-legit website* (looks a little sketch...)

Interesting article Linna.

The point about rice and pigs, and how different numbers of words are found in different languages, depending upon the cultural value accorded to the thing in question is highly significant. Add this to the problem of the overlapping meaning of words - the difference in placement of demarcation of meaning in different languages as exemplified in the story of the question as to whether a driver was available to drive a tourist to some place the following day, and you begin to get an idea of the scale of the problem of rendering something as nebulous as aesthetic quality from one language to another.

I've read before about the poetry in which much of the Hebrew portions of the Bible was written, and how it simply can't be brought across from one language to another; if I remember correctly much has to do with the increased subtlety of the metre as composed to Western poetry.

(Hello by the way. Haven't crossed paths with you for a while! Hope all is good with you and yours. )

Interesting Pete ..

I think that it is likely inevitable that the meaning to the artist is not always conveyed in translations.

Shakespeare has been translated into hundreds of languages .. and when I studied Shakespeare at Uni .. we struggled to understand Shakespeares time, context and meaning to acquire an appreciation of his prose.

How would THAT translate, in translation?

I think its like the purity of the elvish tongue that Tolkien crafted .. it resonates the deeper with those who love and have embraced Tolkiens art, his creations, middle earth etc.

I think it could indeed be learned and ascertained from a study of the original writing in Hugos mother tongue, French. Much is los in translation .. but thats not to say that cant be learned or acquired.

But it cant just be learned in the language of a work imv. It must be understood and appreciated in the language, the context and whatever meaning can be gleaned from bringing those elements together.

Like Linnas example for instance .. the Biblical Proverbs to fully appreciate their meaning need to be variously unpacked in their context, time and meaning. The Bible is a great example of a work of translation that is often misinterpreted on the basis of language.... in our case its English translation. To fully appreciate that work you need to understand more than its English translation. And that in itself raises question marks over literal interpretation.

But I digress .. the books of Proverbs and Psalms were intended as a poetic inspirational device.. but others are better qualified than I am, in this area.

Its really never immho just about the words on a page .. though they can indeed be a delight in and of themselves

peter wrote:The point about rice and pigs, and how different numbers of words are found in different languages, depending upon the cultural value accorded to the thing in question is highly significant. Add this to the problem of the overlapping meaning of words - the difference in placement of demarcation of meaning in different languages as exemplified in the story of the question as to whether a driver was available to drive a tourist to some place the following day, and you begin to get an idea of the scale of the problem of rendering something as nebulous as aesthetic quality from one language to another.

Yesss! (I'd actually wanted to post the dialogue/translation one here... but felt I was getting too far afield from the subject matter... poetic stuff.)

...The pastor asked if the guide could take him to Tomohon the next day.

The guide said, "Yes." I translated, "Maybe."

The pastor then asked if the guide was available the following day.

The guide replied, "Maybe." I translated, "Probably not." That's what the guide meant.

peter wrote:I've read before about the poetry in which much of the Hebrew portions of the Bible was written, and how it simply can't be brought across from one language to another

I've heard stuff about this as well, but in my case only vague stuff.
I've heard that the word order in Psalms specifically is -nothing- like the word order that it's translated to in English.
Would love to know something more specific about what the "shape of the problem" is, but sometimes when you ask Someone Who Knows Stuff (tm), they just stare at you like, "You do NOT have the patience to hear the explanation you need to really understand it, I promise."

Here's one example I have frequently amused myself thinking about!!!
"A word fitly spoken
is like apples of gold in settings of silver."
I love the proverb, because I'm thinking it's talking about the significance of the context of ones words, but...
...I specifically was irked that I wasn't pleased by any gold-on-silver visual I imagined.

Like the aesthetic I'm used to for where I see gold & silver together (jewelry) specifically avoids mixing the two.

But then just in the last few weeks (hence why I'm going on about it) I thought of a context where I could appreciate gold and silver in the same work:

A western show saddle. (when I got my hands on horse magazines, I learned there were 3 main kinds of saddles, "English," "Western," and "Aussie.")
I realize this one's only got silver on it... but the point is I could imagine gold with silver being beautiful together.
Like on this halter:

Kinda want to make a meme that combines both the gold & silver and the words of that proverb.
But I'm too perfectionistic.

sky wrote:I think it could indeed be learned and ascertained from a study of the original writing in Hugos mother tongue, French. Much is lost in translation .. but thats not to say that cant be learned or acquired.

Yeah!
I wonder if this is where people who are "members of both worlds" come in...
Amy Tan's Chinese-American mother-daughter stories bridge continents.
And she'll mix the thought patterns and language of the mother, who grew up in China, and the thought-response of the daughter who is growing up in America, (often including the young woman's initial impression that something is weird because of how it sounds to Western ears) and the thought process of the daughter "working through" something that is nearly impossible- tediously, painfully, sometimes accidentally... until the daughter finally arriving at understanding. (and then the understanding is, in part, shared with you, the reader. in a way that would be impossible without story.)

peter wrote:(Hello by the way. Haven't crossed paths with you for a while! Hope all is good with you and yours. )

Yess! Thank you and thanks for the warm re-welcome.
I am jazzed to be back around the Watch!

Life is pretty exciting and wacky... we've gotten involved in some adventures this year that I hadn't imagined we would... adventures are thrilling but often take a lot out of you and involve frustration at various stages!

Hahaha #jazzed to be back

And we are jazzed to have you back

You do often make me smile little Linna

There's no doubt that much is lost in translation. Everywhere. And unavoidably.
Things are lost in the simple translation between thinking a thought and writing it down, or painting it...between seeing a thing, and snapping a pic of it with your omnipresent phone.

Write a note to yourself for tomorrow...and when you read it, something has already been lost.

Your own words are, to even you, indecipherable...in your own skull, you are lost to yourself.

The amazing thing is that everything isn't lost.
The astounding thing is that anything remains.
The ineffable thing is that every understanding, each comprehension, is in reality an utterly new and becoming creation.

But, more topically, peter: you think something is lost translating from French? You're correct of course...and learning French as it is NOW mightn't be helpful [[though my understanding is "official" French is fairly constrained in changing compared to English]]
Still...look at this, it addresses a bit of your point and cracked me up when I first heard about it. [[The most pertinent stuff starts about half way into page 2]]

https://hdo.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploa ... e-Bush.pdf

I love that V! That's simply great; I'm a Hamlet lover of long standing and that's the best thing I've read on it in many a long year! Those guys took the problem out of the 'problem play' in a few beer inspired insights and did away with 150 years of critical analysis as if it never existed - and it worked!

But this aside, is the story not more one of cultural interpretation - though this of itself must feed into the art of translation (with not, as we see in the link, necessarily bad results on the aesthetic front) - rather than specifically of Artistic Shrinkage (for want of a better way of describing what I'm trying to get at). Absolutely agree with the thing about the death of a little piece of a work at every stage of it's journey from the mind of the artist to the mind of the recipient. It must be the curse of every artist to see the mauling of such ideal visions into the harsh clay of reality simply to render them into the coin of instantiation.

peter wrote: is the story not more one of cultural interpretation - though this of itself must feed into the art of translation

(with not, as we see in the link, necessarily bad results on the aesthetic front)

It must be the curse of every artist to see the mauling of such ideal visions into the harsh clay of reality simply to render them into the coin of instantiation.

On the first...can you show me a culture without stories and language? Can you show me a story or language without a culture? And yea, it feeds into translation...related to next couple thoughts...

On the last...but isn't it ALSO true that something is GAINED? The thing about art that lasts is that it continues to MEAN, continues to BE ART despite the shiftiness/lack of pure definition/delineation. It's not art ONLY because of what it IS, but because it has shapes/lines/spaces that can fit in new contexts/environments. [[which connects to the second, I think]].
An artist that can't handle/doesn't expect that has a few possible problems: s/he's an ideologue/propagandist, a narcissist, partially blind to the world or his/her own creation [or both], or just a bad/limited artist.
Bad and limited aren't the same thing---and limited isn't necessarily a flaw/shortcoming.
I mean...look at comedy [cuz I think it's very clear there]. There are a huge number of comics who are brilliant, hysterical, insightful---for a year, or decade, or generation. After that, they may be historically/evolutionarily important...but they aren't funny any more. And not just cuz we've heard the joke before. Because they were very particular..."local"...in some way.
A few are funny basically forever. Because the particular points/jokes have a sort of quantum entanglement outside the precise context/location.
It's true in any field that can be approached aesthetically, I think.

For the best things, loss happens, a little sad---but what is seen/found and, better yet, made/built/added outweighs it.
A great translator is, in some sense, ALSO a great artist...there are PLENTY of bi/multi-lingual people who are totally shitty translators despite absolute expertise in vocab, grammar, etc.

I don't mean to imply, though, that there is NOTHING that survives, or that a work, not matter how great, can be fitted into/interpreted into any/every shape/meaning/shift.
As I've said elsewhere, I'm sure---it is probably completely impossible to define/know/determine/prove the complete/exact meaning of anything...BUT it's relatively easy to show what things aren't/cannot mean/be about. [usually]

Yes - I'm particularly interested that the intended message of a piece and it's aesthetic quality are though related, to a degree interdependent on each other. The former may shift in meaning in manners beyond the artists intention without in any way impinging upon the artistic value of the work. You could say that the executor controls the later, but has no veto on the former. While he gives the work it's initial framework in this sense, he is in no way the arbiter of the message that the same work will convey, how it will morph and change, with the passage of time.

peter wrote:Yes - I'm particularly interested that the intended message of a piece and it's aesthetic quality are though related, to a degree interdependent on each other. The former may shift in meaning in manners beyond the artists intention without in any way impinging upon the artistic value of the work. You could say that the executor controls the later, but has no veto on the former. While he gives the work it's initial framework in this sense, he is in no way the arbiter of the message that the same work will convey, how it will morph and change, with the passage of time.

Precisely, man, and damn well stated I think.
In my view [and it depends on denoting terms, kinda forcing/limiting in ways that some might argue about, and might be right cuz I'm assigning on the fly]
there are levels/fields.
Concrete---particular, specific, "instantaneous"
Contextual---the above but "set in" the broader milieu.
Contingency---the above but those evolve IN TheMSELVEVES, but ALSO because OTHER concrete and contextual "things" and/or "fields" impinge/intersect.
[[I'm already in my head constructing better versions/explanations/perspectives...but I just like the 3 c words, and don't feel like writing a fucking paper. But fun point/axiom: GREAT artists, or even more-than-a period-or-two break, bleed, and reconstruct those. They don't just "fit" them...they amalgamate, alloy, weft and warp, ground and "explode"---not in the sense of destroy like bombs, but in the sense of expanding, dis/re-articulating...like this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=explode ... kKEbYqKPLM:

The best and most tragic example I can give (and I think I have told this story here before) is that of the children's drawings I saw in the Prague Holocaust Memorial - scenes of gardens and trees and sunlit skies: messages of such innocent hope and joy created in the bleak surrounds of the Czech internment camps prior to the childrens transportation to the death camps from where so few would return. Oh how has the message changed into the one of warning and grief which they convey today.