Translations

[Ari Seppi]

Harry:
>(Rule number 1: any other rule can be violated if it's fun to do so.)

Nice rule, should be adapted to many rule books. :-)

>This is what I would call "local tradition". It is the result of many
>decisions in the past by publishers, translators, etc. Maybe you think these
>decisions were wrong. But maybe the Dutch children would never have read
>these Disney comics if they would have been literal translations of the
>original. And then people like me would never even have heard of the work 
>of Barks.

I agree. Translation's most important function is to work, the
faithfulness comes second. But of course, "to work" is very
hard to define, it is some kind of combination of traditions,
intuition and pure luck.

In some countries like Italy and Greece the dollars (to take
this example) apparently worked in Disney comics, but it
is still hard to say if they had worked in some other
countries.

>For instance, for German Barks readers, the translations/adaptations by
>Erika Fuchs are highly appreciated. She is an counter-example of your 
>phrase "bad, by unknown writers". (Maybe the French adaptations have been 
>much worse than the Dutch and German ones?)

As mentioned in earlier discussions, the Finnish translations
are highly appreciated too. They are almost as sacred as Barks
stories themselves. This raises an interesting question as well:
What about the changes to the original, loved and adored,
translations?

Last weekend I was listening a speech by a fantasy literature
translator. She said that as language develops the translations
age and should be revised. As an example she used Lord of
the Rings (to put it on the right scale for non-Finns: that
translation is one of the most highly respected works of the
history of the Finnish translated literature, "even better than
the original" say some).

Both Tolkien and Barks translations have the same problem
when it comes to revising them: should they be revised and
if so, does anyone dare to do it.

-- 
Ari Seppi (ari.seppi at iki.fi)
http://www.iki.fi/mani/
Winnie the Pooh is my great guru.