The Art of Translation, pt. 1

As I’ve mentioned before (or as you’ve surely guessed by now, if you’ve even read only a couple other posts on this site), I’m particularly fond of Asian literature (especially Japanese, though not exclusively). Considering that I don’t speak any Asian languages, though, I have to experience it all second-hand via a translator. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve no one to blame but myself (at least until I learn to speak Japanese).

So what’s the deal with translations? Why are some so great, while others seem to fall flat?

Or, the more interesting question (which will be the focus of this series on Translation):

If you don’t speak another language, how can you know whether it’s the translation that’s flat, or the author’s original writing?

What a great question! I’m glad you asked.

In this first post, I’ll give you an example by using Spanish (which I speak with about 8% fluency; maybe 8.5% if I’m feeling extra confident one day).

In English, when we’re trying to get someone to believe a funny story that isn’t true, we might say we’re “pulling their leg.”

Spanish has a similar sentiment: Tomar el pelo a alguien. What this actually translates to, though, is “Taking the hair of someone” (in other words, “pulling someone’s hair.”)

It’s the same idea, but in English we say “leg,” and in Spanish they say “hair.” (I leave it to you to decide if one of these makes more sense than the other.)

So then. Let’s suppose a person is commissioned to translate a book from English to Spanish. They come across “You’re pulling my leg!” When they go to translate it, which word do they use: “leg” (pierna) or “hair” (pelo)?

Of course they use “hair” (pelo), right? – that’s how the Spanish variation of this phrase works.

In this case, the word “hair” is technically less literal, but, by being less literal, it actually becomes more accurate.

(At this point, the side of me that loves the topic of spirituality would love to take this into an enormous digression about people taking the Bible literally, but I’ll spare you that here. It’s worth thinking about, though.)

Now let’s imagine this example starting from the other direction. Our translator friend comes across “!Estas tomando mi pelo!”

Ideally, when we pick up the English translation of this book, we’ll see, “You’re pulling my leg!”

If instead, though, we see, “You’re pulling my hair!” (and, from context of the passage, we know that this is a prank story being told, etc.)…well then: we have a bad translation on our hands. The translator should have changed “hair” to “leg,” right? – since that’s the English expression and all.

Surely you see what’s interesting about this:

Reading this, we can tell there’s something wrong with this translation even if we don’t speak a word of Spanish.

For all you grammar-lovers, you’ll know that what I’ve just described is called an idiom (a commonplace expression that has a meaning other than the literal definition of the words).

And idioms, it turns out, are a good clue when identifying the strength of a translation, even when we aren’t familiar with the work’s original language.

Neat.