Re: trainlasting
Steven Gabriel (sgabriel@willamette.edu)
Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:04:22 -0700 (PDT)
I've been taking in the lovely emails on this list for a while and I
thought I might contribute something of my own. I'm afraid it's horribly
unclever for a first post, but so be it.
=)
> How do we measure his success at being translated into Japanese?
> Without recourse to a fluent Japanese/English-speaking person whose
> credentials and sanity have been sufficienty demonstrated?
Perhaps the best we can do. I think it interesting to mention that even
here, following your later analogy we would be filtering this all through
yet another persons understanding of what was going on.
> I don't know about your unconscious, but mine's structured like a
> language...
Actually, I'd say that it's structured like this and so many neurons, but
.... I'm not sure what that would accomplish. I guess this isn't exactly
the thread for a discussion of philosophy of mind.
I've been reading too much Russell or Frege (two silly philosophers that
had a thing or two to say about language) of late and quickly conclude
that one of my problems with their ideas is that they are completely
irrelevant in a discussion like this where meaning is nothing, and nuance
is everything. They would say (or I would translate their ideas such
that), translation is a structural manipulation. Firstly you take a bit
of language and you grind out its meaning, then you take another language
and pound the meaning through it coming out with new bits of language.
The meaning here being some propositions and nonsense. These guys were
mathy folk, and they liked nicely knit logical systems. And I think in a
way they are not too far off. To translate "Where is the train to
station?" to "Wo ist der Haubtbahnhof?" is really just a structural
manipulation. But such manipulation is hardly pretty.
I would venture to say, if I were in a venturing mood, that there really
is no such thing as translation, only approximation. With regards to
poetry or other things of beauty, approximation just doesn't cut it.
That's why, imho, good translations must borrow from the translators own
poetic spirit if they are to attempt to reach the magnitude of the
original.
Phew, enough of that.
Along the lines of good translations let me drop the wonderful name of
Stanislaw Lem. I've not read enough of his works, but every time that I
do I am amazed that his work is translated. If his delightful ideas
suffer from their transfer to English such sufferings have not bothered my
conscience. Some of the poetry in the translation of his "The Cyberiad"
is simply wonderful, and at the same time obviously untranslatable.
Steven Gabriel.
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: Steven Gabriel -- sgabriel@willamette.edu :
: http://www.willamette.edu/~sgabriel :
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