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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

This comment isn't really intended to sound snobbish, but...

I took Ancient Greek in college, and toward the end of the term was reading "The Clouds" in the original. And it was incredibly funny. But I've never found a non-boring translation.

Which led me to suspect that a lot of the modern rejection of classics comes more from the culture and norms of classical scholars' translations than from anything in the works themselves.

(a similar problem is known to have happened more recently with Dumas' "Three Musketeers", which suffered from English translators whose prudishness cut out a lot of fun bits from the original French)

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There is a lot that gets lost in translations. Even from more modern languages where you think translations might well...translate better...fail to translate well due to linguistic differences.

For example, Japanese wordplay doesn't always translate very well to other languages. Since so much of the wordplay relies on similar pronunciation between two words.

私は「今は何時ですか？」ってネコに尋ねました。「ニャぁニャぁ」が返事しました。

"I asked the cat 'what time is it now?' The cat replied 'meow meow'."

Translators note: The Japanese pronunciation for 7 is "なな (nana)" which sounds like ニャアニャア (nyaa nyaa), which is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat's meow. I'm not sure if having the cat respond "meow meow" or "seven" is more funny for the English translation. The joke works better in it's original language as the cat could also be responding with "seven".

It might make for a less clever cat, but maybe you could also have the cat respond "now?" in English.

Or: "Right meow it's seven". But then you get into the whole deal with how literal vs conceptual you want to translate.

I do like that version.

I was reading a summary of Macbeth with my kids this morning and came across several "lost in translations" from English to English - mainly through changes in pronunciation and meaning of words changing over time. For example, the words "fear" and "fair" would have almost sounded identical in early 1600 leading to a play on words of the two themes in Macbeth.

I also came across this interesting article on Kurosawa's interpretation of Macbeth, http://www.academia.edu/3306558/Lost_in_Translation_Reconsid...

I suspect there is a lot lost in translation, which can be challenging when reading old texts.

There are companies which do original-pronunciation Shakespeare and make a point of showing wordplay and rhymes that don't exist in modern English pronunciation. This video has an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

Just from anime and j-pop I know that Japanese wordplay is off the scale crazy to follow along with, especially when they mix it up with English. When I read Japanese literature in English it is important to read the author's notes or else one can miss huge tracts of plot.

A simple example from pop culture would be the Miku Hatsune concerts "39 Giving Day" where '39' sounds like 'thank you' in English and they play 39 songs. In the credits for the MikuFlick iOS game it says at the end "39 for playing!". It's a simple example of what you mean, but j-pop is rife with this. Visual imagery too, the official video for Morning Misume's An Adolescent Boy is Crying Again on youtube has a fan's explanation of the imagery used, it's honestly a good read. (video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtboKJ4D8zg but can't find the comment among the train-wreck that is YT comments). Posting MM video links on HN, what have I become? cries

語呂合わせ is fun! As a Japanese speaker - I prefer it over the major mnemonic system [0]. I find memorizing "Japanese gibberish" easier than forming nonsensical-but-valid English words.

So instead of forming Japanese words (proper 語呂合わせ ) I'll memorize a string of gibberish Japanese sounds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system

In Finland there is a collection of ancient stories or poems - Kalevala. It is something like Iliad and the Odyssey. Language of those poems is really something unique and exceptional. I have been always thinking that it is impossible to really translate it to any other languages. Probably same applies also to original greek works - we who have not studied ancient Greek, can read only bland versions of texts.

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