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Given to me by me Grandmother.

Given to me by me Grandmother.

(post is archived)

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It is an awesome book, but reading the first few lines of your copy makes me really appreciate the flavor of my mid-century American translation.

I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.

vs.

I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me.

Translation is obviously a very tricky game when it comes to literature and poetry, especially when you are attempting to translate from a non-Germanic non-Romance language into English.

Do you translate as accurately as possible, going about it very technically?

Or should you try to impart the spirit of it, knowing a word-for-word translation would lose much of its intending meaning?

Should you ignore idionyms, or try to substitute them for something your lingual audience will understand?

I still have a fantasy about learning medieval Farsi, so I could read Rumi in his original dialect, and decide whether or not he truly was the greatest Poet who ever lived.

[–] 1 pt

i like the contemporary colloquialism of 'don't know beans' in your translation. I'm certain that wasn't translated from Russian.

[–] 1 pt (edited )

It is kind of beautiful, right?

You can tell the translator lived through the Great Depression.

[EDIT: I should give respect to the translator. His name was Ralph E. Matlaw, he died at 63 years old in 1990. Here is a link to his obituary: https://web.archive.org/web/20150525204625/https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/28/obituaries/ralph-matlaw-dies-slavics-professor-63.html]