language & translations & fever

[emei]

I've all sorts of vague thoughts on the power of language and the dilemmas of translation floating around - how deeply language and culture are connected, and how translation is always essentially a re-creation more than a simple transmission of the original message.

Related to fandom, how if we connect to a source in one language it's sometimes

Comments

[mrinalinee]

Eee, I picked a really awesome week to finally look at my flist again; I've got this super-cool TV meme to do, and now some super-cool meta to ramble about. *shrug* I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about, but your English never comes across to me as English as a second language, except in the sense that I know it is ESL, so, well you know; but I don't think anyone ever writes in a way that is 100% natural - I can never reread my stuff because I know I'll read it and be like, Jesus fucking Christ how did I think it was a good idea to structure this sentence in this way, or was I really so intolerant of contractions, or why is my diction so bad, or whatever

[emei]

Hi there you, it's good to see you around! And yeah, fandom seems busy lately, much cool stuff going around. I'm always surprised and relieved when someone tells me my English doesn't come across as ESL - I think I might be a bit overconcious of the fact that it is. And because when I started writing English fic I was 16 and stumbling along with school English, seeing it mostly as language exercise with no need for anything like actual quality. So when I started taking my fannish writing more seriously (serious fannishness! pretentious much?), I got selfconsious again

[mrinalinee]

It's good to see you around too! I've had a lot of rl/fannish self-confidence issues that've been keeping me away, but hopefully I'll get back to posting semi-regularly again soonish. YOUR PRETENTIOUSNESS HAS NOTHING ON MINE, GODDAMNIT.

Yeah, I sort of know what you mean about idiom and things - plus I imagine it's tough for you the other way, too, right? Like, the kind of English you learn in school isn't at all the kind of English you speak in America (or England, in your fic-writing case.) Er, at least I feel like that's been the case with the second languages I've learned in school, and even my actual second language, since my Malayalam is my parent's Malayalam, which is a coupla decades out of date. Idiom is tough thing to teach, and probably tougher when you're writing creative fiction because you have to adapt it to individual voices too. /ramble

Woo no lectures! I know that feeling well.

[emei]

Whee, post, post! :D

Mm, yeah sometimes - language in school usually isn't all that great at teaching you how it's actually used. Though I'd say school English is nothing but the very basis of my English now, I've heard and read and written so much I've basically mostly learnt by immersion. Still happens that I have an easier time understanding scientific articles than teenage American tv drama. Slang, bane of my existence! Might be the problem with your out of date Malayalam too? And general evolution of the language, probably.

It is an awesome feeling.

[quietliban]

I think I get it...I mean, whenever I attempt to read* anything in Italian or Spanish I go through this thing where I read it to myself in the language and then switch to English and then switch back (which basically highlights the fact that I only think in English) and in the end I'm left a little bit bereft, partly because my vocab in those languages is tiny when compared to my vocab in English and partly because I don't have a intrinsic meaning of those words in my head.

(A v. simple example that has baffled me most recently is that for me pane = bread whereas I've come across translations of pane = loaf which you know makes sense...if I think about it, because to me loaf in English does not automatically equal "loaf of bread" and when someone says loaf to me, I think of sweet-cakey things. And yes it does depend on context, and the cultural use of the words...basically, I agree with you. Perhaps learning another language is more equivalent to relearning the world

[emei]

Perhaps learning another language is more equivalent to relearning the world...
Very much this! And it's funny that you use bread as an example because I read something about just that recently - the English bread doesn't equal French pain doesn't equal Swedish bröd, even though it's such an simple straight-forward word and there aren't other words that would be more equivalent. Their exact meaning are so tied to cultural context, so if you don't spend a paragrahp on describing exactly what kind of bread it is, readers will leave with different ideas.

And oh, reading in foreign languages - I think classroom language teaching will never teach us to do that naturally/without translating back and forth. Because to do that on needs to start thinking in the other language, and that's sort of like taking a big jump and accepting that everything is less precise and more unsure and jumbled that you're used to. Learning by immersion, sort of? IDK, that's just what I've been doing.

[emei]

Yeah, rhythm and rhyme especially are so language-specific, it's really hard to transpose. That reminds me, I don't think I've read your solistice fic yet. It was set in Spain?

At the moment I'm not so much feeling down because of it actually, more sort of fascinated by how it works. And getting lots of sleep - 12h yesterday, 10h this night. Well needed. :D

[zahrawithaz]

I think this is a really interesting topic. Have you ever heard the theory that "a good translator works not on the text, but on the reader"--that the translator is transforming the reader into a member of the original language-culture? It's kind of a heady concept--one I don't entirely get myself--but something about your post brought it to my mind.

[emei]

Ooh, I haven't heard of that theory, but it's a very intriguing concept. And it does connect to some things I've been thinking. Like, is the goal of a translation to stay as true to the source text and language-culture as possible, or to transform the text in order to be as close as possible to the language & culture of the reader? I've got a prof who argues the latter but I'm not always sure I agree.