The Art of Translation, pt. 3

We can consider a book’s idioms.

We can consider its use of descriptions.

There's another element we haven't gone over yet, and, in fact, it's the one I notice the most in my own reading. It's also, unfortunately, the hardest element to pin on the author versus the translator. (That is, it's the hardest to figure out who is to blame if this element goes wrong.)

That said, let me first point out: when I'm reading a translated book and I just can't quite figure out whether it's bad writing versus bad translating, I tend to lean towards blaming the translator. If it's 50/50, I'd hate to point fingers at an author who really is a good writer, and just got stuck with a bad translator. I'd hate to be the author in that situation, at least. And isn't the translator's job not only to make a book readable for us, but also to make it connect with us?


So then. The biggest thing I notice about translated books - even more than its idioms and descriptions - is its use of sentence structure.

To do this, let's go back to my blue-sky example from part 2:

There's nothing inherently wrong with the sentence "The sky was blue," right? It says what it needs to say. It's grammatically correct. It tells us something about the setting.

Let's imagine a translated-into-English book with a paragraph something like this, though:

The sky was blue. The air was warm. The sun was shining. A bird was singing. It was nice today. Joe was feeling happy. He liked nice days. Joe went on walks. Walks made him glad.

Gross.

I mean, really: this is downright atrocious, isn't it? What exactly makes this so atrocious, though?

Every one of these sentences is fine on its own (if a little mundane). It's okay to say the sky was blue and that Joe was happy. But every sentence in this paragraph is structured the same way:

Subject - Noun - Object (with an occasional adjective thrown in there)

And, in this case, they're all exactly four words long.

It's like each sentence was made with a cookie cutter. They're basically the same sentence over and over again, just with words swapped out here and there. And our poor, anxious, literary hearts can only take so much of reading the same sentence again and again.

So if this is our translated-into-English book, we can see that something is definitely wrong here. These sentences need to...well, to dance a little. They need to be different lengths and tell us different ideas and reorganize the way in which the words are presented.

What about something like this?

The sky was blue. The warm air wrapped around Joe, making him glad to be on a walk. If it were up to him, this is how every day would be: clear skies, singing birds, the sun shining brightly. He always felt particularly happy on days just like this, days when he could be outside in the world, taking in the colors and the sounds the earth had to offer.

Yes, I know this is still garbage. But at least there's variation, right? At least each sentence sounds different and flows nicely and doesn't feel like it was tossed out of the same blender as each and every one of the sentences surrounding it.

But now we have to come to the question we keep asking: If we pick up a book with the first paragraph I shared, is it bad writing or bad translating?

This is going to get just a touch mathematical.

Yes, the author can write those terrible sentences, and the translator can translate them just as terribly.

Or else the writer can write wonderful sentences that follow the fantastic, intricate, varied grammar of another language, which the translator simply doesn't bother to rearrange in a meaningful way for the sake of his English audience.

Either way, what's the common denominator between these two scenarios?

One is Bad Writer + Bad Translator.
One is Good Writer + Bad Translator.

There's not really an option here for Bad Writer + Good Translator, though, is there?
And this sure as heck isn't the case of Good Writer + Good Translator. Something is definitely wrong.

When the use of sentence structures is this terrible in a translated-into-English book, whether or not the original writing is bad - which we can't always say for certain - what we can say is that, almost assuredly, the translation is bad. The translator did nothing at all to help these sentences mean something to us.

This is why, when a translated-into-English book feels off, I usually try to give the original author the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the translation that's funky.