This was an interesting piece at MereO, where what I was most interested in is where a translator needs to invent a word (or character) completely, to strongly distinguish the Divine from other categories. The first example I think of in English is "consubstantial." https://mereorthodoxy.com/bible-translation/
This is such a good example of the "obligatory categories" dimension of translation—some languages simply must refer to beings by gender, others don't, and then you have situations like this where you *can* gender but you choose not to because another aspect of the being's nature takes precedence. I like what this piece says about translation fundamentally being a series of "prudential judgments," because it's absolutely true, no matter how principled or theoretically rigorous we think we are. I also like the emphasis on trusting the reader's intelligence—neither author nor translator needs to spoonfeed the reader everything, you can actually trust people to draw reasonable conclusions. Although I do think he's too kind when he quotes Chesterton...the man wasn't talking about "home education" in general, but the education of women specifically. Talk about a convenient moment to avoid gendering! Lol.
(This is just to say that I strongly recommend that everyone read the Y. R. Chao essay, which is a delight, and concerns itself with the difficulties of translating Alice in Wonderland into Chinese.)
Loved this but I'm going to start counting the # of words I have to look up.
1.perspicacity
2. hagiography
3. interlocutor
4. contrapuntal.
I am looking forward to learning more from you...
Shawn
This was an interesting piece at MereO, where what I was most interested in is where a translator needs to invent a word (or character) completely, to strongly distinguish the Divine from other categories. The first example I think of in English is "consubstantial." https://mereorthodoxy.com/bible-translation/
This is such a good example of the "obligatory categories" dimension of translation—some languages simply must refer to beings by gender, others don't, and then you have situations like this where you *can* gender but you choose not to because another aspect of the being's nature takes precedence. I like what this piece says about translation fundamentally being a series of "prudential judgments," because it's absolutely true, no matter how principled or theoretically rigorous we think we are. I also like the emphasis on trusting the reader's intelligence—neither author nor translator needs to spoonfeed the reader everything, you can actually trust people to draw reasonable conclusions. Although I do think he's too kind when he quotes Chesterton...the man wasn't talking about "home education" in general, but the education of women specifically. Talk about a convenient moment to avoid gendering! Lol.
(This is just to say that I strongly recommend that everyone read the Y. R. Chao essay, which is a delight, and concerns itself with the difficulties of translating Alice in Wonderland into Chinese.)