Free translations

Arie Fachrisal cien2 at cbn.net.id
Thu Apr 6 18:26:31 CEST 2000


> From: Stefan =?iso-8859-1?Q?Di=F6s?= <pyas at swipnet.se>
>  <<<<If I want
> >
> > to read a story by Rosa, Barks, Scrapa, whoever, I want to read their
works,
> > not
> > the modified works of Stephan Dios.
>
>
> Now you mention the greatest masters. It would be very rare that I'd take
upon
> myself to correct or improve upon such elite authors... although I'll
readily
> admit that I would try it whenever I saw necessary. Even for other
writers, I
> really don't change as much as it may sound from some of my overly pompous
> "mission statements". Ten or fifteen years ago I'd change a lot more than
I do
> now. (And then the Swedish editors would make further changes behind me.
Those
> poor writers of the 80's!)
Some parts of the stories that can't be translated well even by the most
seasoned "translating" men, am i allowed to say that kind of phrase? :-D
Well, again, some parts that can't be translated well are of course the
jokes and phrases. i've read Indonesian versions of Disney stories and found
that the translators sometimes can't translate the jokes or phrases well and
they decide to change the whole joke or dialogue line to make it better
received by local readers here. eg. in a US story (is it Horseradish story,
i forgot), there is a line that goes something like: i smell something fishy
here. Now in my country something fishy actually means smell like fish.
While in US language something fishy can be smell like a fish and something
suspicious. But the translators here decide to go on and therefore make the
meaning that the Beagle Boys smells fish aromas from Uncle Scrooge body and
not suspicious.
i'm not favoring anyone here but all i'm saying is translating stories is a
very different job. Trying to keep the writer's exact meaning can be
troublesome. Most stories i read in my country's language, some of the
dialogues have been changed due to the untranslatable phrases and in-jokes.

Best,
Arie Fachrisal who sometimes don't understand the jokes even when reading in
the original English language :-)





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