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In Reply to: That is not a right way of putting it posted by Victor Khomenko on December 07, 2003 at 10:55:28:
Victor:All right: let's look at the distinction between Knowing and Understanding.
Defined: the art of knowing means to have book knowledge of a subject
and knowledge of the facts available;the art of understanding
means *in addition* to have that 'first feel' where
NO EXPLANATION IS NECESSARY. Let's take you and your
R-u-s-s-i-a-n-e-s-s. You 'instinctively' understood that there
are two different Russian words for 'Mother Russia' or 'Motherland'
(I can't recall which term had the two different words). Now,
do you honestly expect a non-Russian 'Russian expert' to understand
that?? Forgetting competent translators for the moment, and answer
this question, please.Thanks once again for your cooperation.
Follow Ups:
There is no question any foreigner can miss some subtleties. But as I said, this would potentially be an invisible sin. In this case, when reading the translation, nothing would catch your attention, no rough spots, and you would never know that the author perhaps had something different in mind.But you will most definitely notice the error in the translation done the other way. We all have seen such cases, of which some product user manuals are perhaps the prime example - some Asian ones translated into English by the Asians make people laugh.
In that case the translator might attempt to introduce a construct that in his view expresses the original meaning, but the result might be a foreign sounding phrase or expression.
Such "foreign" sound may or may not be a fault, even if immediately noticeable, BTW. A reader might recognize it as a foreign construct, but it might indeed have very clear and concise meaning, making it passable and acceptable, even adding some flavor.
But those are my feelings... are you trying to make me agree that the other way is superior?
Victor:The example with Asian product manuals translated by Asians into English may be laughable, but are the instructions *implementable*?
Nextly, were those components of a significantly different design than North American/European ones and translated by non-Asians, would makes you believe the reader-user's userability would be higher?The example with the Russian's translation of the Longfellow poem is indeed surprising. It is surely an anomoly, but even you note that some wordings were "inexact" . . though you claim the tone from the Russian Russian translation *matched* the original you read years later in English.
It's a problem of Stage One getting accomplished or achieved. You can't KNOW the original text UNTIL you've felt the 'associations' that native language offers. Typically, translators (and foreign correspondents--those Whores of Journalism) never become acquainted with the Second Language/Second Culture until they are midway through their college education. That's at 20 years of age, minimally. That is not the kind of person I would care to trust a knowledge of a foreign culture or foreign text.
C.K.
"Clarity: It's a rarity."
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