Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 January 5

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January 5

Most "untranslatable" English novel

I was wondering which English language novel is considered to be the most difficult to translate into another language? --BorgQueen (talk) 12:28, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

My money's on Ulysses. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 12:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Rather than Ulysses, I would suggest another of James Joyce's novels: Finnegans Wake. Bendono (talk) 12:41, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Amazingly, both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake have actually been translated - certainly into French (see the French wp articles: 1 & 2) and probably other languages too. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

They've both been translated into German too. I don't envy those translators. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 12:57, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

My response was to the question: "most difficult to translate", not to imply that it is impossible. I've read a Japanese translation of Finnegan and it's almost as impenetrable as the original. Bendono (talk) 13:00, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I read a Japanese translation of "Bravo Two Zero" (though not strictly a novel, in the sense that it is a true story). It was only half as long as the original, and the author said he did that deliberately because the background information (mainly British cultural aspects) would have made the translation twice as long as the original. I suspect he actually just didn't understand most of it. --ChokinBako (talk) 13:40, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Trainspotting (novel)? It's written in phonetic scots. Foxhill (talk) 19:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, parts of it are, but once you know what the vocabulary means, it's not hard to understand. It might be hard to capture the same feeling, without translating it into a widely spoken but not generally written dialect of the target language. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I read a French translation of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" which claimed that the translator "a beaucoup souffert". But since he started calling Zaphod Beeblebrox "Zappi Bibici" at the beginning, then reverted to the canonical Zaphod halfway, I do not think he had suffered enough. SaundersW (talk) 19:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, Steve Yarbrough once commented that, when his novels are translated into Polish, (southern american) dialectal speech is translated into a certin mountain dialect of Polish. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:48, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

When one of the Hercule Poirot novels was translated into Czech, some readers are said to have vehemently objected to rendering Poirot's French-Belgian accent in English into a Sudeten-German accent in Czech... AnonMoos (talk) 23:11, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, there's no reason why the unlucky Sudeten Germans should adopt Poirot. No doubt Czech can manage a workable French-Belgian (or, if we're to be frank, French) accent of its own. Xn4 23:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Translation almost always requires adopting compromises. Some things are simply untranslateable without resorting to the sorts of rough (or very rough) equivalents mentioned above. Most jokes involving puns and a lot of poetry cannot be translated without either doing severe damage to the original, or completely losing the point of the pun or the poem; it's better for the listener to learn the original language and approach them in their pure state. That said, anyone who undertakes the task of translating Finnegans Wake deserves more than a medal; the prerequisite is they can actually understand it to begin with, which is a monumental challenge all by itself. Anyone who read right through to the last page (and that doesn't include me) would have ended up with a completely different brain than the one they started out with, so that may help to explain how they approached translating it. -- JackofOz (talk) 03:07, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

My dad read an Italian detective novel which included a good deal of Sicilian dialogue. He got a kick out of my suggestion that in English translation the Sicilian could be rendered as Scots, but says that when he repeats the idea hardly anyone "gets it". —Tamfang (talk) 04:45, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

How do you translate The Old Man and the Sea into Spanish? Do you take the stuff that's already in Spanish and translate it into English? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:03, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The Russian in A Clockwork Orange was translated into English when the rest of it was translated into Russian. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:19, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

How about Henry V into French? AnonMoos (talk) 13:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

And in the German translation of the Simpsons episode Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk (caution: incorrect German in the title), the German buyers use the Bavarian dialect. --Taraborn (talk) 09:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

If the subject of translatability is of interest, I strongly recommend having a look at Douglas Hofstadter's book Le Ton beau de Marot. (Note: although the title is in French, the book is in English). --Anonymous, 05:07 UTC, January 6, 2008.

It may not be quite what the OP was aiming at, but there are a number of novels (e.g. Gadsby, and in French La Disparition) written without the use of the letter 'e' which must be pretty difficult to translate if you stick to this! 163.1.148.158 (talk) 16:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

(A bit off-topic) Well, not to speak of poetry, which is really untranslatable. I mean, what is the X Bucolic in anything but Latin? I know, translators make an enormous effort to render the contents of poetry to some other language. But in the process, the original music is lost.

Besides, much of the etymological plays authors use are lacking in translations. Borges employs many of such etymological links. I can't imagine The Circular Ruins in Chinese (though surely enough some poor Chinese translator had to deal with that task). Pallida  Mors 20:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Correct wording

This question concerns correct / proper / appropriate / grammatical / linguistic wording. FYI -- The context of this question is that it arises from my reading, and attempting to edit, the following Wikipedia article: List of persons who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.

Consider the following sentence (the "original sentence"):

This is a list of persons who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards, the four major entertainment awards in American show business.

Question 1: Linguistically speaking ... that is, by parsing the actual language above ... what exactly does that above sentence communicate ... concept (A) below or concept (B) below?

(A) There are some people in the world (like Rita Moreno) who have won all four of the awards ... and this is a list of such people. In other words, people who have each won all four of the awards.

(B) Some people have won Academy Awards (perhaps with or without winning any of the other three awards) ... some people have won Emmy Awards (perhaps with or without winning any of the other three awards)... some people have won Grammy Awards (perhaps with or without winning any of the other three awards) ... and some people have won Tony Awards (perhaps with or without winning any of the other three awards) ... that is, among all of these people, there may (or may not) be some overlap in award wins ... and this is a list of all of these people. In other words, people who have each won any one (or possibly more) of the four awards.

Question 2: Assuming that the original sentence may be ambiguous, what is a nice, clean, compact English sentence to communicate concept (A)? That is, what might make an efficient Wikipedia article title like "List of persons who ..."

Question 3: Assuming that the original sentence may be ambiguous, what is a nice, clean, compact English sentence to communicate concept (B)? That is, what might make an efficient Wikipedia article title like "List of persons who ..."

Question 4: While we are at it ... what is the distinction between "persons" and "people" and, in the context above, which word is the correct one? Is there any subtle difference between the words "persons" and "people" ... if so, what? And, back to the original sentence ... and the correct Wikipedia article title ... which word is correct / better / more proper / more appropriate to use, "persons" or "people" ... and why?

Question 5: In the original sentence (and article title), should the first occurrence of the word "Awards" begin with an upper-case letter "A" or a lower-case letter "a" and why? And what about the second occurrence?

Thank you. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC))

The "and" should be "or", and "persons" should be "people". Some people like "persons", thinking that it is more "proper", but everybody else uses "people" there. "Awards" should be lower-case both times, the first by the same rule that gives us "the corner of Grove and Pine streets". The second is obvious. Your "original sentence" should be "This is a list of people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, or Tony awards, the four major entertainment awards in American show business." The "or" presents no ambiguity, because if a person has won more than one of the awards, he or she has won at least one, which is what the sentence says. --Milkbreath (talk) 18:12, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I read your reply. Thanks. But I am confused by what you said. In all that you have stated in your above reply, are you seeking to effectuate Concept A or B? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:24, 5 January 2008 (UTC))

Ah. Right. Sorry. I should have looked at the article. I assumed it meant any one of the awards. I was going for concept B. The article is actually about concept A. That being the case, "and" doesn't work. It technically does, but it leaves room for doubt. A possible solution is "This is a list of people who have won all four of the major entertainment awards in American show business—the Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony awards." Thanks for your patience. --Milkbreath (talk) 20:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, except I think the mixture of nicknames and official names doesn't work. Since most people know only the nicknames except for the Oscar, I think it should say "the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony" or "the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony". Of course these should link to the appropriate pages. --Anonymous, 05:18 UTC, January 6, 2008.

I like that, but since there's more than one of each award, I'd go with "an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony". -- JackofOz (talk) 22:38, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

For earlier discussions concerning persons versus people, see Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Language/2006 October 2#People v. Persons and Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 October 7#People, Persons.  --Lambiam 17:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I completely disagree with those who think that "persons" should be "people". The problem with "people" is not its etymological status per se, but rather the fact that it has unwanted overtones of community. "Persons" is the true unmarked plural of "person", the one that makes no other assumptions. --Trovatore (talk) 23:38, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Most people would disagree with that, and therefore, they would be right. --Anonymous, 07:01 UTC, January 7, 2008.

False. It's true that "most people" is more idiomatic than "most persons". However in formal categorizations like this, "people" carries overtones of community, and most readers will in fact be aware of that at some level, though they may not have thought about it sufficiently to respond instantly that they are. So "persons" is much preferable. --Trovatore (talk) 19:00, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Most people would disagree with that, and therefore, they would be right. --Anonymous, 03:43 UTC, January 8, 2008.

False. "Most people" are not automatically right. And if they thought about it enough they'd come to my conclusions, anyway. --Trovatore (talk) 08:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Billy Thorpe had a great song about this. He even borrowed the title as the title for his autobiography. :) - JackofOz (talk) 21:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to all for the input ... and especially to Lambian for the link to the prior discussion on "people" versus "persons". (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2008 (UTC))

My 2c: I think 'persons' implies 'individuals', as in 'I have a knife on my person'. 'People' on the other hand can convey anything from a handful of individuals, to millions of people. Anyway, it all depends on context. In the OP's case, both 'persons' and 'people' would be correct, although 'persons' would be more accurate. Rfwoolf (talk) 20:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)