On 1/10/2013 1:36 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Stathis:
you MUST know better....I suppose.
You wrote in the Lem-story about the first straight Polish to English
translation: //
/_allowing English-speaking readers to finally experience the book as its
author intended._/
You may be bilingual (at least?) so my experience may not surprise you (having almost 2
mother-tongues and lived in the (English?) US for more than 4 decades) that
*/NO TRANSLATION/*
gives 'back' the author's original thoughts and phrases.
I read books translated and the originals, in languages I master as 'my own' and saw the
benevolent mistakes galore.
I had an old friend in Hungary, a linguistic professor, who learned Russian on his
death-bed because he wanted to read Tolstoy in original. (He taught T earlier for decades).
I agree: French is a good transltional interface to change meanings, but English is by
no means a medium for a good straight translation (transfiguration?) (especially from
POLISH).
I find that interesting since my favorite writer and an acknowledged master of english
prose, Joesph Conrad, was Polish. He lived in France as a youngster and also spoke
French. He said that he choose to write in English because it was more expressive,
allowed more metaphors, than French - and if he wrote in Polish nobody would read him.
Brent
Yours - Suffering from multilinguistic horrors
John M
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