It could be that Boris and Arkady aren't as much the wordsmiths as Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Ibsen and others I've read in translation, but I think there's something else going on here. I think the translator picked equivalent idiomatic phrases when he could've left the translation as "literal" and let us enjoy the interestingly foreign perspective.

Has anyone else experienced this before?

The speaker indicated that Tindale's translation was pure poetry and that because of the richness of his interpretation, the English language changed from being perceived as a vulgar, backwater tongue to something worth speaking.

The speaker credited Tindale with making English acceptable in the world, and giving it the first steps in the direction of becoming the "lingua franca" that it is today.

I also think that what was meant by the praise of Tindale was not that he improved the meaning or poetry of the original scripture (because modern scholors are beginning to notice that some of the forms of poetry found in the original language far exceed anything that has been rendered in English) but rather that he improved the English language by introducing metaphorical forms and elevating existing poetic forms of English to convey the meaning of the original language.

I do have to say, though, that these forms are not consistently followed throughout the original languages of the Biblical scriptures, so perhaps putting them all into a single, rich, unified idiom was a great improvement. Certainly many of the interrelated but chronologically separated parallels are made more forceful and accessable. On the other hand...

Anyway, in answer to the original question, I would like to have a skilled writer who admired my work translate it into an appropriate idiom of the language. Just as I think that Beowulf should sound archeic, even in translation, in deference to it's great age, so my story should have a consideration given to it's idiom's relation to 'vulgar' English when being translated. But I think of this mainly as a matter of word choice.

As far as meaningful translation, I think that a word for word correlation should be established, with careful attention to matching formality and tone of language. I think that it's fine to translate something into casual, everyday English, as long as it started in the vulgar idiom of the language from which it is translated. I hate Bibles that use everyday langauge, because we all know that the scriptures comprising the Bible, while composed in different languages with different levels of formality and different literary conventions, were nonetheless written in very 'high' literary idiom. Even the most 'vulgar' of the Gospels (which are the most vulgar of the main Biblical texts), Mark, still contains much beautiful language and parallelism.

They may make frequent reference to previous English texts, but they all report a rather exhaustive process of using the oldest and most reliably authenticated sources they can find, then translating forward.

As for translating into modern English, I think that is a good thing and probably entirely in keeping with the older traditions. Many of the languages of the Bible are now dead (or accessible only to scholars). But I think it is safe to say that the Bible is for the most part derived from earlier oral tradition. As such, it was certainly formalized (as Survivor says), but it was also highly accessible to the people of the day. These were never intended to be arcana passed around among the the literati. They were for every one of us.

Choosing thee and thou instead of "you" doesn't make the Bible better or worse. If the message gets through without detrimental distortion, I say, make it easy to understand so that more can have access. And for the scholars among us, there's always the old source documents to study and argue over. Best of both worlds, seems to me.

Anyway, I have to say that the formal poetical forms of the Biblical scriptures are interesting, but not essential to the Bible of themselves. What is essential is the literary voice in which they are written. Inherently strongly traditional in form, inherently poetic, inherently scriptural. I'm actually rather opposed to any further translations that deviate markedly from the earliest translations, excepting corrections of actual mistranslations. I feel that the JKV, compiled from all earlier editions, depending on which was most faithful to the original languages, followed this rule. I think that subsequent versions including newly discovered material are acceptable, as long as they only change language when there is an actual error in the existing reading and use language in keeping with the traditional tone, style, and wording of the traditional text.

As I say, these tenents are for preserving inherent qualities of the Biblical scriptures, such as strong traditionalism and the idea of preservation of a fixed text. I don't hold them as tenents for translating all works, or even all scripture. For instance, I find the text of the Tao Te Ching needs interpolation when translated, since it's always saying things like 'hot is cold, up is down' and other things that just make no sense in English. Also, the Tao Te Ching is intended primarially as a 'seed' or starting point for spiritual thought, and it's language is not 'traditionalist' in form. It was not passed down over generations, but written by a single person in a relatively short time. Also, recasting the Tao Te Ching is an integral part of the Taoist tradition, so a word for word translation is actually less faithful than an expository translation.

You have to capture the 'feel' of the original, and I feel strongly that all the translations of the Bible into modern language cast aside one of the most important 'feelings' of the Bible, its traditionalism. Of course, the moral framework and history are interesting and valid, but these are well expressed in the traditional English versions. On the other hand, if I were writing a translation of the Sun Tzu, I would make it very military in character, using recognizable English language ranks and military units and words like 'objective', 'strategic', 'expendable', and so on. And in writing a translation of...oh, greek history, I would adopt an academic air, talking about it as if it were ancient history (which it is).

That's the problem. Most Biblicists regard codified scripture differently than extant manuscripts, and translations should reflect that. The Bible is what it is because it has been accepted as scripture, and it was not codified until centuries after the scriptures it contains were written.

This is getting away from translation and turning into a discussion of doctrine.

Regardless of who is the one, true arbiter,
I'm the one, true moderator and I say no more Bible translation discussion.

Well, now, I have been giving this some more thought and it reminded me of Stephen Jay Gould's article in this month's Natural History. He's writing about canonical stories and how they actually get in the way of the truth. We bend the truth to fit a standard story line. One he talks about is the "but for this..." story which traces notable failures (or successes) to one pivotal event or person, when in reality the thing hinged on a series of occurrences and individual contributions.

To bring this back to translations, I imagine every (human) culture probably shares at some level the same sorts of canonical story structures. If so, everything we write could be codified as adhering to, or slightly varying one of more of these recurring "deep structures."

But that can't be really all there is to it. Otherwise, we could write stories as one-liners and get the same emotional impact.

For example:

Persistent lover, wins in end.

Undesired, undervalued person proves true worth and wins the heart of his beloved.

Evil controlling older relative learns to give.

And so on. We string 6 or 8 of these together and the reader crumples to the floor in tears or howls of laughter...

No, there is art to it. The problem with translation, I suppose, is that the BEST translator would have to be a native speaker of both the input and output languages, and he or she would have to be as good a writer as the person who wrote the original manuscript. To do a great work justice would require another artist of the same calibre.

I guess I should go easier on the poor guy who translated the Strugatsky's work. He may have had merely good work as his starting off point. Or, he may have only been given time to be merely good himself.

Ah well. I guess the real trick is to write the original so well that the effect of the translator can't diminish it so far as to make it not worth reading. Yet another incentive to do a better job on our writing.

I thought of another canonical tale:

I like 'translations' of Shakespeare into contemporary English, for that matter, I even like translations into jargon or technical argot (by setting the work in a really modern milieu). I also forgot to put an ironic smiley face at the end of my last post. My main point, that the Bible was originally written as a compilation of ancient works, was a matter of stylistic import, rather than doctrinal import. Just as I don't agree with every 'free wheeling' and 'cursive' translation of the Tao Te Ching, or every translation of the Sun Tzu that uses military jargon, I don't disagree with 'New' Bible translations. I just think you lose an element of style (like writing a translation of the Sun Tzu using a day-care theme, you might actually cast its ideas very accurately, but you would lose the style totally).

Anyway, to get to the topic of archtypical stories, I think that it really depends on the culture. In Japan, which has much stronger archetypes, much of the literature's impact is derived from just such one line references to cultural icons. The thing is, we have a much more diverse, and therefore more individually variable culture (or should I say collection of subcultures?). I dare say there are pivitol events that come out of your own experience, or out of your family history, that can evoke strong reactions in you just from a passing reference.

We, as Americans, have certain stories that are embedded in our minds. Watergate, Veitnam, Snafu, Love Canal, Chinatown (I don't even know what that means, I never saw the movie), are all stories that evoke feelings in us just at the mention of their names. Here's a story for you, "Abused victim learns to trust again." It doesn't do anything for us, because the words are so cold. But if you are a victim of abuse, and you see this story, even in microcosm, it affects you powerfully (the Horse Whisperer, no, I don't mean the movie, I mean the guy, would make people faint by gaining the trust of an abused horse using his 'whispering' techniques).

We are a culture much more affected by images, also. A picture of a child being tucked into bed at night by her parents is such an obvious cliche, "parents provide security and comfort for child" that we almost wince now when we see it, but other images inform our ideas about society.

But I think that when you translate a story from another language, you run into a problem, particularly if the culture of the language that you translate from is rich in archetypes that are not shared by the cultural reference of the language you are translating into. Imagine that you are reading a story translated from Chinese, and a reference to the battle at the Chain Bridges comes up. Can you be expected to know, without some explanation, what that is supposed to mean?

But then, what if you're too lazy to do that? Well, I guess that you just have to cross your fingers and hope for the best. I suppose that you just need to find a translator that you find talented and competent, much the way that readers have to select at least some of their reading on the basis of who authored it.

Really, I think that's what it comes down to. A writer may care more about the accuracy of the finished translation, but the reader, who is unlikely to be a good judge of accuracy (else why read the translation?) will probably judge a translation on its own literary merits, independent of whether it's accurate (after all, it's not like we're talking about scripture ).

So I say, just enjoy it for what it's worth. A crappy translator might ruin the most beautiful story, a creative one might take a half-hearted sketch and turn it into a masterpiece (and of course, a 'good' translator should just turn the work into what it was in the original).