Tenebrae
Verified
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2005
- Messages
- 3,999
- Points
- 38
Hello everyone!
I'd like to ask you a question: how many languages do you speak? That's right, me neither! And when it comes to pretty much anything that is not in English, French or Chinese I have to resort to translations, whether it is a novel, an essay, a movie, a musical piece, a comic, a video game, an instruction manual, my computer's OS... ANYTHING really.
Think about the sheer mass of cultural production on this planet. Now think about it this way: you wouldn't be able to access 99% of it if there were not armies of people who had gone through the pain of learning a foreign language and approach the work in such a way that they managed, after tremendous efforts, to make it intelligible in your own lingo. Given the wide cultural and semantic differences that exist between cultures, it is no small feat.
Without translators, you wouldn't be able to import or export any cultural product. There's also a big chance that your religion, whichever it is, wouldn't have left the confines of Asia or the Middle East either. We wouldn't be able to communicate efficiently, because each other's culture would be a complete and opaque mystery.
It is an ungrateful work, however necessary. Everyone has forgotten who were the people who translated the Bible, from Aramaic to Greek, from Greek to Latin and from Latin to the vernacular. Everybody knows the great Terry Pratchett (RIP), but no one cares about the people who tasked themselves with the insane mission of translating his fantastic puns into German, Portuguese or French (in the latter case, the man is named Thierry Couton; he really deserves praise!). I know very few Philosophy teachers even in Yale who can say who translated Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn or Kirkegaard into English. Yet can you imagine a world where you would have to learn German, Russian or Danish to discover these giants of Western civilization?
There is no Nobel Prize for translation as far as I know. Salaries for translators go from ridiculously low to downright exploitative. At least we can praise the people who endeavor to bring knowledge, culture, or even entertainment to us, in a language that we can understand, because it is impossible to learn all of them.
Have a look at this:
Without even understanding it, you have probably recognized this ultra famous quote from Nietzsche: "When fighting monsters..." etc. It is funny to note that in Chinese, the term "monster" has been translated by "evil dragon" (which shows the kind of cultural adaptation translators have to be able to make), but the meaning is unchanged.
It was sent to me by my wife last week; she knows I am a sucker for German philosophy. It prompted a discussion between us about the importance of translation, how so few Chinese have learned German and yet after his works were translated into Chinese, how many can know discover Nietzsche's timeless wisdom. Same goes the other way around: if Matteo Ricci hadn't compiled the very first Chinese-Western dictionary in the 16th century, the works of Confucius, Sun Zi and all the most important Chinese thinkers would have taken forever to reach us. Maybe today we would be barely knowing them. Keep that in mind next time you watch a foreign film or read a foreign book, and have a word of praise for the translator!
I'd like to ask you a question: how many languages do you speak? That's right, me neither! And when it comes to pretty much anything that is not in English, French or Chinese I have to resort to translations, whether it is a novel, an essay, a movie, a musical piece, a comic, a video game, an instruction manual, my computer's OS... ANYTHING really.
Think about the sheer mass of cultural production on this planet. Now think about it this way: you wouldn't be able to access 99% of it if there were not armies of people who had gone through the pain of learning a foreign language and approach the work in such a way that they managed, after tremendous efforts, to make it intelligible in your own lingo. Given the wide cultural and semantic differences that exist between cultures, it is no small feat.
Without translators, you wouldn't be able to import or export any cultural product. There's also a big chance that your religion, whichever it is, wouldn't have left the confines of Asia or the Middle East either. We wouldn't be able to communicate efficiently, because each other's culture would be a complete and opaque mystery.
It is an ungrateful work, however necessary. Everyone has forgotten who were the people who translated the Bible, from Aramaic to Greek, from Greek to Latin and from Latin to the vernacular. Everybody knows the great Terry Pratchett (RIP), but no one cares about the people who tasked themselves with the insane mission of translating his fantastic puns into German, Portuguese or French (in the latter case, the man is named Thierry Couton; he really deserves praise!). I know very few Philosophy teachers even in Yale who can say who translated Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn or Kirkegaard into English. Yet can you imagine a world where you would have to learn German, Russian or Danish to discover these giants of Western civilization?
There is no Nobel Prize for translation as far as I know. Salaries for translators go from ridiculously low to downright exploitative. At least we can praise the people who endeavor to bring knowledge, culture, or even entertainment to us, in a language that we can understand, because it is impossible to learn all of them.
Have a look at this:
Without even understanding it, you have probably recognized this ultra famous quote from Nietzsche: "When fighting monsters..." etc. It is funny to note that in Chinese, the term "monster" has been translated by "evil dragon" (which shows the kind of cultural adaptation translators have to be able to make), but the meaning is unchanged.
It was sent to me by my wife last week; she knows I am a sucker for German philosophy. It prompted a discussion between us about the importance of translation, how so few Chinese have learned German and yet after his works were translated into Chinese, how many can know discover Nietzsche's timeless wisdom. Same goes the other way around: if Matteo Ricci hadn't compiled the very first Chinese-Western dictionary in the 16th century, the works of Confucius, Sun Zi and all the most important Chinese thinkers would have taken forever to reach us. Maybe today we would be barely knowing them. Keep that in mind next time you watch a foreign film or read a foreign book, and have a word of praise for the translator!
Last edited: