Re: OT: Defining words and how they are used

A comment about the two following messages:

1)
> From: "Gary Shannon" <fiziwig@...>
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 5:16 PM
> Subject: Re: Defining words and how they are used
> >
> > One really can't understand Shakespeare properly
> > unless one reads it in the original Klingon.
> >
> > --gary
> >
2)
> On 6/23/06, Michael Adams <abrigon@...> wrote:
> Does raise a wierd question, how translating something from one
> to another language, does it change things? I know for the most
> part there is minor changes, but not to major, but over time,
> does things really change that much?
>
> Mike
>
I speculate that it strongly depends on the text you are translating.
If the purpose of the text is to clearly explaing something (e.g. how
to install a DVD player, or how a research was performed), then you do
not lose much meaning.
The other extreme is a profetical text: how could you translate
Nostradamus without losing the subtleties of the text? In this case
you lose so much semantical information that the translation would be
very unreliable. (Of course, such intentionally vague texts do not
have much useful information anyway, at least for agnostic people like
me, so you would not lose anything at all :P. I apologize if I
offended someone's beliefs with my intended-to-be-funny comment. ).
In between, there are literary texts, which contain a lot of nuances
that explore particularities and idioms of the language, but usually
are not filled with so many misterious messages as profetical texts
are (it depends on the author's intentions, of course). Translations
of literary texts have been proved to be formidable challenges, but
professional translators have been doing it with moderate-to-high
success.

Antonielly Garcia Rodrigues