When one translates a literary
text one is creating a connection between the languages it was written and the
language it is translated into. Thus creating a link between the language’s
ideas, beliefs, and traditions. Being a translator is more difficult than just
translating words into words, because they have to understand specific idioms,
proverbs and metaphors and create literal substitutes into the new language. For
me personally (being a bilingual speaker of languages) it is easier to
understand what I mean by translating is difficult, because often times when I want
to translate words that I know from Arabic to English or vice versa, I can
never find the exact meaning to fit what I am trying to say. For example: When
one uses the word inch’allah in Arabic, they use it in the context of ‘I wish’
or ‘hopefully’, but when it is translated to English the literal meaning means ‘if
God wills’. That being said it is easy to understand why translating literature
is a very demanding task on anyone, because they not only need to fully know
another language they have to understand the way the text is written, the
context, the specific way of writing etc. This creative translation
involves synthesizing a series of elements, such as rhythm, punctuation,
syntax, mood, and meaning (or, in other words, content and form). In
conclusion, it is an extremely hard task to be able to translate literature,
however it is a very beneficial task considering the people that want to learn
about someone else’s culture and history, or just wanting be able to read a
specific text in the language they understand.
Nice blog post Chris. I enjoyed your post and agree with you on the difficult aspect of translating between languages as each language has its own style and metaphors which makes it hard to try to translate things word for word.
ReplyDeleteI like the concept of a translator being more than just that alone, you gave a good insight into how effective a translated text is. Good job x
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