Free translations

Santiago Garcia Banhos sgarcia at uf-isf.es
Wed Apr 5 17:29:33 CEST 2000


About the recent theme of accurate tranlations:

I understand perfectly the point of view of John Garvin, meaning he wants
his work to be transmited accurately, just as it was created. But I agree
with Stephan in the sense that I think the translator becomes part of the
work, as he/she provides the dialogues not only the language, but even the
sense it needs for the story to be fully understood and enjoyed in the
destination country.

This does not apologize the mistakes and bad traslations, of corse, but
instead the work of the translator as a 'second' scripter. I know there are
other points of view - it's a matter of opinions, I think.

As many of yours, I have got some stories translated in several languages,
and I must tell the huge difference I've seen sometimes in the same story
because of the translation: one very literal, very poor, just 'enough'...
and the other full of funny speech, rhyming words (untranslatable!), with a
lot more words than the necessary, just to enhance the speech... much better
even than the original one! I feel sorrow when I think about all the fun I'd
missed if not for the fantastic translations I've read.

>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.
Why not? I'm not a purist, I DO want to read Stephan Dios if he writes
dialogues (not only for the language) more undestandable for me! (I must say
it's just an example; actually I don't read swedish :-)

Though, I know it's hard to agree with free translations when you see things
like 'How dare you speak to me in that tone of voice, Gertrude!' :-)

Greetings,

Santiago.






More information about the DCML mailing list