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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I'm picking up al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke. It's more scholarly and less popular than expected. The title apparently means that for all the woke signalling being done, actual wokeness is more about appearances and ambition than anything.
I just started Jane Austen’s Emma. I’ve been meaning to read more ”proper” books for a while and I recently watched and loved Clueless (1995) which turns out to be a very well regarded modernized adaptation of Emma to a 90s high school setting. Thus getting an annotated ebook seemed a natural choice (for the high, high, price of $4.50). Wish me luck, lol.
Some googling for translations has also revealed an interesting example of elitism in literary circles. People recoil at the very idea that someone would translate older English language Classics to modern late 1900s / 2000s English and tell you to just suck it up with the overly complicated sentence structure and completely changed meaning of words. However translating to a foreign language - which throws the sentence structure to wind and streamlines it significantly - is somehow perfectly fine. Goddamn elitists…
Then that is a bad translation. If a book has complex and difficult sentence structure in the original, it should be preserved in translation (and some translations, like Ottilie Mulzet's translations from Hungarian, imo qualify as great works in themselves). Of course, good writing, ideally, has sentences which are complex but not difficult, sentences which flow, which pull you along in a clear semantic progress from concept to concept. Reading these sentences is a skill, one which modern readers have to develop, but that's fine, it's part of being a good reader. You may be taking too much of a jump at once - consider taking a look at Conrad or some other turn-of-the-century author, who can act as a bridge into the Victorians. Personally, I read very few Victorian novels, too stodgy for me, but still try to keep sharp on it to read Victorian poetry, history, and philosophy.
With respect to archaic terms, that's understandably frustrating to non-native speakers, but also part of the game. There are very few cases where you can seamlessly replace a word without some semantic or rhythmic difference. Where I do share your frustration is with the ebook format. Footnotes are very easy, and often necessary, on a physical book (e.g. there is simply no way to do without them for a Classical text), but a huge pain in the ass on e-readers.
Are you actually proficient in two languages that belong in two different language families?
Because if you are, then you should know that preserving the original sentence structure is flat out impossible in many cases because languages have different grammars. What is correct structure in language A can be very much not correct in language B.
This is exactly why I wish such english -> english translations would exist! To me the old text does not flow. It's overly complicated in ways which contribute absolutely nothing to it and could be streamlined with minimal alterations (see example 3 here) that would subtract absolutely nothing from the original. And of course the original keep existing for anyone who wants to read them.
Seriously, what is it with these condescending personal attacks? Do you truly believe that anyone who disagrees with you can only do so because they are somehow inferior?
Unless your intent is to demonstrate that literature buffs are narrowminded gatekeeping idiots who can only consider their own position and never anyone else's, in which case you're doing an excellent job at that. It sure takes some guts to complain that non-native speakers don't have perfect enough grasp of the language when only a small fraction of the natives speak any other language with remotely the same fluency.
No, it is not. Some of it can be but others are simply a case of changed meaning where a new word can be substituted in that place to restore the original meaning.
I think I've been unclear there. What I mean to say is that if a book has complex and layered sentence structure, that should be reflected in the translation, and likewise if it has clear prose with short sentences. Translation is not a case of going word for word. For instance, if you are translating a single-sentence modernist novel, your translation should if at all possible be a single sentence in the other language. It's an art that trades off preserving word-for-word accuracy, semantics, flow, rhythm, and structural considerations. I've read a couple works in multiple translations, and you can see how the tradeoffs work and which translators do it better.
I did see your examples, and I'm sorry to say that Example 3 is just worse prose (to be fair, Example 2, the Finnish translation, is execrable, I assume because that sentence structure is impossible in Finnish?). It's easier for an inattentive or less experienced reader to follow, because it breaks up the sentence with an extra verb and a reminder of the subject, but it kills the rhythm and unbalances the structure. Try reading the original and the edit out loud - notice how, for instance, the original is instantly dramatic, with the little break between "Woodhouse" and "handsome" making you read "handsome, clever, and rich" with energy, notice how the emphases on "house" and "handsome" both play on each other and break natural iambic rhythm in a way that makes "handsome" bounce off the tongue, and that runs all the way to the next strong syllable of "COMfortable". Meanwhile Example 3 reads comparatively flat, just conveying information, more like a movie narrator or a story you could read out in a classroom.
It's fine for the various forms of art appreciation to be skills you have to learn and develop - and, as you point out, only a small fraction of native speakers ever develop them. As an example, I am a complete philistine when it comes to appreciating music (but I also don't insist to my Wagner-loving friends that he's got too many notes and they're just gatekeeping). I suppose I could couch it in more padding and compliments and so on, but this is the Autism Forum. I told you how it is, and gave you my advice, which is to use authors who bridge the gap in prose style between the modernists and the Victorians as a way to develop those skills.
To a more general point, I think a lot of people have skills they don't think of as "skills" but as innate things which are reflections of their intelligence, self-worth, whatever. I've made this point a lot in the various Wellness Wednesday discussions of socializing, making friends, dating, etc. that those things are skills you have to learn and practice consciously, and doing that is the difference between getting what you want socially and becoming an ngmi shut-in. People are more receptive to that advice about social skills here, because, again, this is the Autism Forum, but it's also true of reading and writing prose. Such is life.
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