Re: to translate or not

On 2 May, Irina Rempt wrote:

>On Wed, 2 May 2001, dirk elzinga wrote:
>I never meant that, no. It's not that the Bible, or anything, would
>be *offensive* to speakers of Valdyan (well, to some, as it is to
>some speakers of English; it's impossible to have a text inoffensive
>to *everybody* that still has any meaning at all).
>
>I was just trying to explain why I don't do every translation
>exercise, however useful they may be to show off grammar, and more
>specifically why I don't do the Babel text, however much of a
>yardstick that may be. In short, it would probably change Valdyan
>culture beyond recognition and beyond repair, and I don't want to
>risk that.

I agree with Irina.
     And AFAIK, in "the real world", most times a vital
piece of one culture was translated into another culture which lacked
the concepts or world-view of the first, it was usually done intentionally
as the "thin edge of the wedge": first a little "harmless" translatation.
Next: "what? you don't understand it? here let me "instruct" you. "
Then culutral/linguistic domination. And followed, in many cases,
by total destruction of the "target" culture and assimilation of its bearers
into the dominating culture!
    I suppose that a non-speaker of a (nat) lang _could_ make up words for
things that the speakers have no experience with, without asking them;
(such as translating "sand dune" in one of the Eskimo langs as
"brown-snowdrift"), but what have you accomplished? It might be
grammatically possible in that lang, but can you really consider that a
translation
when nobody in the lang/culture has ever likely used that word?
I mean, one could probably "translate" an NASA rocket manual into
ancient Akkadian. But would the result really be Akkadian?




>As much as I like cilantro, I don't put it in vanilla
>ice-cream.
Or use olive oil to make popcorn!  :-P
(I had thought: Hey! I live in the Mediterranean world!
Olive oil is supposed to be the regional "put it in everything"
ingredient. Now I know why one exception is popcorn! :-)  )


Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

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