Re: CHAT: Hello

On Tue, 1 May 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Tue, 1 May 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Irina Rempt wrote:
> > >On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > >
> > > > Irina Rempt wrote:
> > >
> > > > But how does a lack of "cultural neutrality" make something bad as
> > > > an translation exercise?
> > >
> > >Not bad as such, but bad to translate into languages of cultures that
> > >clash with the values expressed in it.
> >
> > I'm not sure I follow you here. You seem to be saying one shouldn't
> > translate something that the speakers of the "target" lang wouldn't agree
> > with. In that reasoning it'd be wrong to translate, say, Mein Kampf into
> > English because the vast majority of English speakers aren't nazis and would
> > strongly disagree with its contents.
>
> I don't follow that either.
If it came across as "nothing should be translated that the speakers
of the target language wouldn't *agree* with" I obviously wasn't
clear enough. What I meant is that I don't want the Christian,
Judean (or whatever) religious subtext that's in anything from the
Bible to influence Valdyan culture, because I want it influenced only
by things compatible with it, and the culture of the Bible is not
compatible.

Translating *anything* lengthy from the Bible (or modern-day
political texts, or Kipling, for that matter) into Valdyan calls for
many words for concepts that don't exist in Valdyan (the *concepts*
don't exist, it's not just that I don't know the words yet) which
will forever after be part of the Valdyan vocabulary, that is, of the
culture. By translating something alien to the culture I've
contaminated the culture by concepts alien to it, and I don't want
that to happen so I take care only to translate things either neutral
or fully compatible (like the Vlami story or the Draseléq play).

> OTOH, I'm not convinced anyone should *have*
> to translate things into their conlang that they don't want to, for
> whatever reason.  I have no desire to translate the Babel text into
> Chevraqis; it's a conculture lang, and there aren't *any* nearby
> cultures/nations with some of the concepts that the Babel text would
> require, so it would feel odd to me to come up with vocab for it.
Yes, exactly.

I've snipped the political discussion, because I have no desire at
all to take part in that.

   Irina

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