Re: concepts of Babel text

On Thu, 3 May 2001, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Irina Rempt wrote:
> > It describes what happened *in a specific culture*. If one's language
> > comes with a culture of its own, it may be the case that not only did
> > it (or anything like it) never happen in the history of that culture,
> > but it *could* never have happened because the premises are too
> > different.
>
> But ... by that argument, it shouldn't be translated into English.  With
> the exception of Fundamentalists, no one believes that it's true in a
> literal sense.  The Kassí would find it unbelievable too, but that
> doesn't mean it can't be translated into Uatakassí.  They'd just think
> of it as another strange belief of a strange culture.
Note that I didn't say that it *shouldn't* be translated; only that
in some cases translating it would do things to the culture that the
creator of the culture doesn't want done to it. The thing that some
people say of the Bible in *this* world, in fact (not about creators
of a culture, of course, but about cultures).

The story of Vlami didn't happen in Valdyan history either, but at
least nothing happens in it that needs completely new concepts that
I don't only have to find the words for (finding new words is one of
the *good* things of translation exercises) but new ways of thinking
as well.

If I translate things from the Bible - which I'm steeped in myself;
it would probably be different if that, too, were a piece of writing
from a culture I'm not familiar with) it's almost unavoidable to have
Biblical thinking influence Valdyan thinking, and I don't want that
to happen because I want it to be its own culture, not a
"what-Irina-thinks" culture.

Valdyan isn't complete enough, and isn't carried by enough
*different* people, to stand up to that amount of culture shock. I
may flatter myself to think it would, but I don't want to take the
risk.

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself)     http://www.valdyas.org/irina/valdyas