Re: My first translation in Moten! Champagne for all!

On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> >I think this has come up before - I'd be happy to supply some text
> >to someone building an encyclopedia of conlangs, but I'm not going
> >to translate bits from the Bible. It just doesn't work, culturally.
> >
> What would? I have often speculated on that. The bible is the most
> widely translated book in the world, so on that basis it seems to be
> the natural choice for conlang samples. Unfortunately, as you said,
> there are things in the bible that would be difficult (if not
> impossible) to interpret for another culture.
>
> Perhaps there's some UN mandate we could use instead. But that
> sounds boring to translate. So I guess culturally neutral means
> boring. Again I ask, what can we use instead?
UN mandates are *not* culturally neutral. They presuppose a lot of
common values that are bound to seem silly, useless, or just plain
wrong for many concultures.

I don't think there's any single piece of writing that *all* of us
would be able to translate comfortably, without culture clash or
having to warp the language irrevocably out of shape.

But what's wrong with having a collection of translations of
different pieces? Two or three different translations in each
language, out of a set of perhaps a dozen originals (not all in
English), would probably give a good impression of the richness of
our field. Come to think of it we may already be able to come up with
something like that from the translation exercises posted recently
(i.e. since February or so when I re-joined the list); not all of us
did all of those, only those that seemed to fit.

I have a different reason for not wanting to translate the Bible:
every translation into a language makes the source influence the
shape of the language (and thereby the culture), and I don't want
Valdyan culture influenced by Christianity any more than it already
is because it's built on my own (Christian) ethics and morals.

   Irina


            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastinay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
       http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)