Why are modern translations so narrow? What level of nuance would you like them to capture?
By narrow I mean they are aiming to provide language-language translation, but they could hypothetically done on a much more granular level. For instance, a translation that matches the very specific vernacular of some shared Dutch & Jamaican family with its own code words. And there’s no reason the semantics can’t be considerably changed. Maybe Hamlet could be adjusted to take place in whichever professional context a small community would be most likely to understand, and then presented as a post modern punk musical because that community really likes post modern punk musicals. Whatever works.
One could argue that “liberal translations could never improve on the source, and therefore we need to force everyone to only use the source.” I disagree.
In translations of poetry—something I have amateur experience with—you have a lot of decisions to make.
I’m sure there must be a far greater deal of similar discussion around Biblical translations. See the entire field of Hermeneutics, for instance.
That said, I’d note I’m personally interested in this for collective epistemic reasons. I think that the value of “an large cluster of people can better understand each other and thus do much better research and epistemic and moral thinking” is a bigger priority than doing this for artistic reasons, though perhaps it’s less interesting.
For instance, a translation that matches the very specific vernacular of some shared Dutch & Jamaican family with its own code words. And there’s no reason the semantics can’t be considerably changed. Maybe Hamlet could be adjusted to take place in whichever professional context a small community would be most likely to understand, and then presented as a post modern punk musical because that community really likes post modern punk musicals. Whatever works.
Yeah okay that is a far more radical definition of ‘translation’ than I was working with. I buy translating things into idiolects (like the Dutch + Jamaican family), but I’m still skeptical of the second half of that paragraph. The problem being, in order to translate Hamlet into a new context and format, you have to make decisions about what the point of Hamletis. There’s a vague sense in which The Lion King is a version of Hamlet, but you obviously take away very different things from the two experiences. You’d have to have a very clear goal in mind when constructing your professional-context postmodern punk musical Hamlet, and the choice of that goal would make a huge difference to the end product.
You’d have to have a very clear goal in mind when constructing your professional-context postmodern punk musical Hamlet, and the choice of that goal would make a huge difference to the end product.
Agreed. This is a radical definition.
As translation gets more and more expansive, it becomes more difficult to ensure consistency and quality. But it also leads to a lot of value generation, so can often be worth it.
Hamilton, the Musical, was arguably a retelling / “expansive translation” of the book, which itself was a summary of the original documents. I think most people who originally heard about the idea of Hamilton thought it could never work because of how weird (and expansive) it was. Not only was it presented for people who liked musicals, but it was sort of optimized to appeal specifically to communities of color. It doesn’t only translate the older dialects into modern English, but it converts it specifically to the vernacular and musical preferences of parts of Hip Hop culture.
I’m a big fan of that. I’m sure a lot of information was lost along the way, but the value proposition of this dramatic reinterpretation is clear to many viewers.
Now, not every potential translator may be as talented as Lin-Manuel Miranda now, but the potential is still clear, and in the future we’ll have AI to help us.
By narrow I mean they are aiming to provide language-language translation, but they could hypothetically done on a much more granular level. For instance, a translation that matches the very specific vernacular of some shared Dutch & Jamaican family with its own code words. And there’s no reason the semantics can’t be considerably changed. Maybe Hamlet could be adjusted to take place in whichever professional context a small community would be most likely to understand, and then presented as a post modern punk musical because that community really likes post modern punk musicals. Whatever works.
One could argue that “liberal translations could never improve on the source, and therefore we need to force everyone to only use the source.” I disagree.
Very true! There’s actually a lot of discussion of this around Harry Potter, which needed a lot of translations very quickly, and does have a fair bit of wordplay and the like. See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_in_translation
I’m sure there must be a far greater deal of similar discussion around Biblical translations. See the entire field of Hermeneutics, for instance.
That said, I’d note I’m personally interested in this for collective epistemic reasons. I think that the value of “an large cluster of people can better understand each other and thus do much better research and epistemic and moral thinking” is a bigger priority than doing this for artistic reasons, though perhaps it’s less interesting.
Yeah okay that is a far more radical definition of ‘translation’ than I was working with. I buy translating things into idiolects (like the Dutch + Jamaican family), but I’m still skeptical of the second half of that paragraph. The problem being, in order to translate Hamlet into a new context and format, you have to make decisions about what the point of Hamlet is. There’s a vague sense in which The Lion King is a version of Hamlet, but you obviously take away very different things from the two experiences. You’d have to have a very clear goal in mind when constructing your professional-context postmodern punk musical Hamlet, and the choice of that goal would make a huge difference to the end product.
Agreed. This is a radical definition.
As translation gets more and more expansive, it becomes more difficult to ensure consistency and quality. But it also leads to a lot of value generation, so can often be worth it.
Hamilton, the Musical, was arguably a retelling / “expansive translation” of the book, which itself was a summary of the original documents. I think most people who originally heard about the idea of Hamilton thought it could never work because of how weird (and expansive) it was. Not only was it presented for people who liked musicals, but it was sort of optimized to appeal specifically to communities of color. It doesn’t only translate the older dialects into modern English, but it converts it specifically to the vernacular and musical preferences of parts of Hip Hop culture.
I’m a big fan of that. I’m sure a lot of information was lost along the way, but the value proposition of this dramatic reinterpretation is clear to many viewers.
Now, not every potential translator may be as talented as Lin-Manuel Miranda now, but the potential is still clear, and in the future we’ll have AI to help us.