How the fuck do translators get away with this? Your fucking job is to translate, not edit in your own shit. FUCK!

Yuck

That's a good a rec as any but how's it topical to the thread?

The Beautiful Tuna of Marot?

The first two are theorists of translation. Pope is an example of someone who completely ignored "our fucking job is to translate, not edit in your own shit", with excellent results.

Actually instead of Pope a better choice would be FitzGerald, who truly butchered Khayyam beyond recognition.

Waley's another good example of translations that has pervaded English better than the originals. Or Pound.

I think its wrong to deceive your readers by updating a text and presenting it as a translation. But translating works in general often cannot be done without changing the text.

Dutch is one of the closest languages to English. Yet I often find ideas hard to translate literally as we use figurative speech to convey ideas a lot more often than most people think. With historical texts in more distant languages it often becomes near impossible to give a direct translation.

Because it could well be the direct translation, if that is even possible, changes the meaning of the text.

Translations are actualized interpretations, they are works by themselves. Want to be autistic with accuracy? Too bad even your reading of the original work would be harmed by reading the work as a non-intended reader.

I can give a few examples:

uitbuiken = bellying out
Which is what you do after dinner. Sitting back and sticking your belly out at the dinner table and let the meal go down a bit.

huis = house
huisje = the diminutive of house, but not necessarily a small house

helaas pindakaas = unfortunately peanut butter
Which means: "What a shame".

De beste stuurlui staan aan wal = the best helmsmen stand on shore
Which means: "It's easy to talk from the sidelines".

je = you
jij = you
jou = you
u = you
jullie = you

>being monolingual
How does it feel to be subhuman?

I think historical documents really ought to not be meddled with in translations.

I think historical documents in particular ought to be meddled with in translations.

>I think historical documents really ought to not be meddled with in translations.
Oh, come on, there are like 50 translations of this already, so if the translator's goal is to make it more "modern" and he's open about it in his preface, who cares. He warned you.

No two persons will translate something the same way for the simple reason that no two persons will read something the same way. There are various degrees to this of course, but the goal is to make the text how it would be if it had been written by a native English or whatever speaking person.

If you're translating something where the style is a major part, it might be needed to stick more closely to the text to reproduce the rhythm and flow, but it's always a balance between the various elements (you want to be true to what the author wrote as far as the content, tone, style, etc. go, but you also want it to be just as understandable by a reader in your language than by a reader who reads it in the original language). It's a balancing act.

That said, to go back to historical documents, there are a bunch of translations of this. If you're really interested in the text, try reading it in the original language if you can, then read a few translations. It will give you a couple versions of the same thing and more likely than not will make your overall understanding better.

>This stopped being the case on the fateful day when some idiot thought that things had to be localized and not translated.
An objective translation just is not possible. Even translating something word for word creates a fuckton of mistakes. Words have different weight and values in different languages. Sometimes you need to changes things that would distract from what the author is trying to convey and make it more idiomatic unless you're a pseud who gets off having to read a same sentence three times in a row because you think that something that's clunky and hard to understand is "deep".

>An objective translation just is not possible.
I know but that's also not the problem, the problem comes when things are changed because of cultural/ideological reasons which is why i draw a difference between these two
because in the end to change he to they or similar things is unreasonable and unnecessary because we had the vocabulary to express what the author wanted to express

On the face of it, I agree that a translator should not have an agenda. That said, I don't know Arabic or whatever language the Nag Hammadi scriptures were written in, and how gender pronouns are used in that language. OP's reviewer seems to be comparing this translating to another one he preferred, without knowing for sure if it was more accurate or not. It's very likely that in most cases, the gender of the pronouns didn't matter at all and simply used whatever was neutral at that time (which was masculine). The translator seems to say he felt that today this could distract some people from the message, and preferred to use the "new neutral" (which is the neutral it/they or whatever). I hate SJWs as much as anyone, but he was honest about what he did, and unless he really went overboard, this kind of change probably doesn't affect the overall sense of the text at all.

Eco wrote some interesting things too. I'm not to far into Saying Almost the Same Thing, but it's insightful up to now.

Eco wrote some interesting things too. I'm not to far into Saying Almost the Same Thing, but it's insightful up to now.

I didn't know if I should post this or not but seeing as how similar things have happened to others I'll do it

>working night shift at servo on road that heads out to highway
>nothing much happens at this time since people rarely leave the city late at night
>at exactly midnight a man with a hoodie and long pants comes in
>can't see any details on his face
>hello sir can i help you
>no response, he just walks straight to the toilets
>a few minutes later hear the howl of a thousand souls coming from the toilets
>it lasts at least 10 seconds, makes the cash machine vibrate
>man leaves, doesn't talk or buy anything just walks out as fast as he can
>grab gun and check toilets, nothing there

No idea what happened guys

wrong thread my bad

Masculine pronouns have never been 'neutral'. Historical texts always used 'he' because the only people who actually mattered in those societies were men.

So when the OP mentions 'father', the word will have literally been 'father', male parent; and with 'he', actually 'he'.

A translator changing an historic 'he' into an 'it' has a modern, contemporary agenda, and so it mistranslating the work: removing the explicit bias towards men at the time of the original work. The fact that 'he' is now looked upon unfavourably is irrelevant: it's a historical work.

My first concern when choosing a translation, at least with fiction/poetry/etc., is the quality of the English. I'm willing to sacrifice accuracy to a certain extent.

With poetry it becomes even more fun. Check the Dutch national anthem in melodic and non-melodic English.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmus#Lyrics

It's a world of difference.