Re: Brothers Karamazov

Robbie -- you've qualified your point almost to death, probably because
you really know what you're talking about. Ever read Walter Benjamin's
essay about translating? Pretty interesting, you may want to read it
sometime. It's in _Illuminations_.

My experience with foreign languages extends to koine Greek (a little
bit), German (a little bit more), and Spanish (a little bit more).
 Greek and German are very similar and have all the characteristics of
word placement you describe.

Given that background, my comment was motivated by two ideas:

1. Translating a foreign language is never an excuse for writing bad
English.
2. Just last weekend I read several essays by Jurgen Habermas, and
without even having the German in front of me I could easily see how the
placement of subordinate clauses was guided by sticking too closely to
German word placement. I could also see how the clause placement could
have very easily been guided by concerns for what makes good English
without sacrificing any degree of meaning.

In other words, you don't really gain anything at all by sticking so
closely to the structure of the native language. English has its own
structures for communicating emphasis and those, I think, should be
followed instead.

Now after saying this, I will admit that it's conceivable that
_sometimes_ badly written English (relatively) may communicate more of
the "meaning" (however we choose to define that) than a smooth English
translation of the same sentence. But overall, I don't think this is
the case. The difference is a badly written text vs. a well written
text with an occasional awkward sentence.

Or, in other words, all the difference in the world.

Jim

L. Manning Vines wrote:

>I don't think that the Russian authors have often made such use of this as
>did the best of the Greeks and Romans, but it IS a tool in the repertoire of
>a skilled Russian master. It is often impossible to maintain such artifacts
>in translation, especially in translations into languages like English, but
>those stiff, stilted translations often come from translators who decided to
>betray certain "dispensable" aspects of English syntax in order to be truer
>to the original. This makes for a tougher read but sometimes, under certain
>circumstances, it extends the author's reach so slightly beyond the place
>where the easier translations allow him to go no further.
>
>-robbie
>
>

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Received on Wed Apr 16 10:42:48 2003