Helen
Implicitly explicit
The longer I do it, the more difficult it gets. It really should be the other way around, it should get easier. And of course it does, in one way. Translation has been part of most of my jobs for about thirty years, and that has gotten easier. But the translations I have been doing as part of various jobs have been straightforward, mostly related to disabilities and international aid. Most of the words have an exact equivalent in the other language. That does not mean that I cannot get bogged down on a good day, trying out different structures, and all the words that do not have an exact opposite in the other language could mean hours of meditation over alternate meanings. But ususally at work, you are pressed for time, and you can't sit around all day, polishing the details.
Fiction now, thats another thing completely. There, the possibilites are endless! So are the difficulties. And I will very quickly paint myself into a tiny, claustrophobic corner, a square meter at the most, where I will sit and turn every word over and over and over and over... And over.
Because words are not just a few letters on a page, they bring with them all kinds of ideas and associations from the culture where they belong. All sorts of images will occur in the reader's mind, depending on both culture and individual experiences. Where did you hear a word the first time? Bedtime story, nursery rhyme for instance? Then it's forever coloured by that.
Let me give you a recent example, that I spent a ridiculous amount of time pondering: Whey. seems straightforward enough, doesn't it? Oh no, No, no, no. No such thing as a straighforward word.
In Swedish, whey is a word based in the old rural society, a word with both feet (or however many feet whey has) on the ground. It conjures up pictures of flaxen haired, sturdy girls on the hill farms, calling in their cows for milking. A no nonsense word, a word for everyday use.
Some of that may be true for the English word as well, though perhaps it is not quite so flaxen. But then there is another, quite different feel to it, since there is that little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme echo. And suddenly the words are worlds apart, and the one could not possibly be exchanged for the other.
But it does not even take that much to make me dither. It does not even have to be the kind of words with infinite possibilites, such as adjectives or adverbs. I can make do splendidly with verbs and nouns. At present, I have become so feeble minded, that I can dither for hours even over a pronoun. Take "I". A statement in itself; proud and erect - an exclamation mark of a pronoun. In Swedish, it's "jag". Very understated. Most of the action is going on underneath. Well then, if I translate "I" with "jag", how could that possibly be any good? They are so different, they say such different things to the reader, that they cannot possibly have anything to do with each other.
And don't get me started on words that have no equivalent at all in the other language. No, I really mean that, don't get me started. It's not pretty, you see. Unless you like your middle aged women, normally grey all over, going bright pink with exertion and confusion. Or abject fear...
No, translation is no longer possible. A single, to anyone else fairly simple, sentence, reduces me to a quivering jelly of indecision. And even if there may be people out there who would quite like me to translate books for them, they do not want me to spend 15 years or more on a short story. If I could indeed get through it that fast.
But on the whole, words are wonderful. The can peform all sorts of amazing tricks. You can't use them for anything besides entertainment, though, if you ask me. Communication? You must be joking! Communication is impossible! How could I possibly convey to you what I mean, merely by using words? They will not mean even remotely the same thing to you that they do to me. You don't have to take my word for it, the entire Internet is a testimony to that.
So, to translate or not? Not, I think, on the whole. Definitely not.
Fiction now, thats another thing completely. There, the possibilites are endless! So are the difficulties. And I will very quickly paint myself into a tiny, claustrophobic corner, a square meter at the most, where I will sit and turn every word over and over and over and over... And over.
Because words are not just a few letters on a page, they bring with them all kinds of ideas and associations from the culture where they belong. All sorts of images will occur in the reader's mind, depending on both culture and individual experiences. Where did you hear a word the first time? Bedtime story, nursery rhyme for instance? Then it's forever coloured by that.
Let me give you a recent example, that I spent a ridiculous amount of time pondering: Whey. seems straightforward enough, doesn't it? Oh no, No, no, no. No such thing as a straighforward word.
In Swedish, whey is a word based in the old rural society, a word with both feet (or however many feet whey has) on the ground. It conjures up pictures of flaxen haired, sturdy girls on the hill farms, calling in their cows for milking. A no nonsense word, a word for everyday use.
Some of that may be true for the English word as well, though perhaps it is not quite so flaxen. But then there is another, quite different feel to it, since there is that little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme echo. And suddenly the words are worlds apart, and the one could not possibly be exchanged for the other.
But it does not even take that much to make me dither. It does not even have to be the kind of words with infinite possibilites, such as adjectives or adverbs. I can make do splendidly with verbs and nouns. At present, I have become so feeble minded, that I can dither for hours even over a pronoun. Take "I". A statement in itself; proud and erect - an exclamation mark of a pronoun. In Swedish, it's "jag". Very understated. Most of the action is going on underneath. Well then, if I translate "I" with "jag", how could that possibly be any good? They are so different, they say such different things to the reader, that they cannot possibly have anything to do with each other.
And don't get me started on words that have no equivalent at all in the other language. No, I really mean that, don't get me started. It's not pretty, you see. Unless you like your middle aged women, normally grey all over, going bright pink with exertion and confusion. Or abject fear...
No, translation is no longer possible. A single, to anyone else fairly simple, sentence, reduces me to a quivering jelly of indecision. And even if there may be people out there who would quite like me to translate books for them, they do not want me to spend 15 years or more on a short story. If I could indeed get through it that fast.
But on the whole, words are wonderful. The can peform all sorts of amazing tricks. You can't use them for anything besides entertainment, though, if you ask me. Communication? You must be joking! Communication is impossible! How could I possibly convey to you what I mean, merely by using words? They will not mean even remotely the same thing to you that they do to me. You don't have to take my word for it, the entire Internet is a testimony to that.
So, to translate or not? Not, I think, on the whole. Definitely not.
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). But I have no idea how they do it
