I am reminded of my German classes when I was at college. We started getting into poetry in 201, which was far enough in that the folks filling a requirement weren't slogging through anymore. We had to pick a poem and translate it.
So I picked out my poem (Erste Schritte by Albrecht Goes) and did three translations. The first was thorough Babel Fish. The second was a technical translation, focused on making it understandable. (Your first step is small, my child).
The third was a more artistic translation, focused not just on being understandable, but also on trying to properly translate the *poem*, not just the words. The rhymes got flat out lost in translation, so I winged it a bit. I'm personally still unsure of how well I did on the third, but the difference between the first and the second was very noticeable.
(I just ran the poem through Google, and how the hell does Google not know the word 'klein'? And it completely dropped 'mit' from the third line, which leads to a very different meaning, and how the fucking hell is this still just as bad as it was in 2001, WHEN I FIRST RAN IT THROUGH BABEL?!?)
So I picked out my poem (Erste Schritte by Albrecht Goes) and did three translations. The first was thorough Babel Fish. The second was a technical translation, focused on making it understandable. (Your first step is small, my child).
The third was a more artistic translation, focused not just on being understandable, but also on trying to properly translate the *poem*, not just the words. The rhymes got flat out lost in translation, so I winged it a bit. I'm personally still unsure of how well I did on the third, but the difference between the first and the second was very noticeable.
(I just ran the poem through Google, and how the hell does Google not know the word 'klein'? And it completely dropped 'mit' from the third line, which leads to a very different meaning, and how the fucking hell is this still just as bad as it was in 2001, WHEN I FIRST RAN IT THROUGH BABEL?!?)
Reply
Leave a comment