/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11721761]

>Il ne parle pas Français

Reminder that you aren't reading Proust when you're reading translation.

[Anonymous No.11721766]

Savoir parler français est un impératif pour quiconque s'exclame être un amoureux de la littérature, effectivement mon cher ami.

[Anonymous No.11721802]

>>11721761
It's a bit of a dying language, unfortunately.

[Anonymous No.11721821]

C'est une belle langue, pour être honnête

[Anonymous No.11721832]

>>11721802
Il vivra pour toujours dans l'esprit de la intelligentsia

[Anonymous No.11721845]

>Lui non parla Italiano

[Anonymous No.11721849]

>Il n'a pas lu les symbolistes français en leur langue originale
embarrassant
Est-ce 'en' ou 'dans' je ne suis pas sûr

[Anonymous No.11721903]

You should know either french, german or russian to call yourself an intellectual.
>>11721849
"dans" is the more natural way of saying it.

[Anonymous No.11721937]

>Oni jeszcze nie mówią po polsku
I don't know how you're gonna make it through Gombrowicz or Schulz. Or Konwicki. Or Lem. Or Hłasko. Or Masłowska.

[Anonymous No.11721997]

>>11721937
Literally who.

[Anonymous No.11722065]

>>11721849
It's 'originelle', not 'originale'. 'Original' means something that is new and innovative. 'Originel' is used for the other nuances of the word original in English.

[Anonymous No.11722066]

>>11721903
you should know three + latin, greek, hebrew, spanish and italian desu

[Anonymous No.11722071]

>>11721903
>>11722065
merci

[Anonymous No.11722080]

>>11722065
'Original' in french is noun and 'originel' is an adjective, right?

[Anonymous No.11722083]

>>11721761
Friendly reminder that Proust was a monoglot that loved reading translations of English writers.

[Anonymous No.11722085]

>>11721903
>to call yourself an intellectual

[Anonymous No.11722106]

>>11722083
this

[Anonymous No.11722116]

>>11721761
>problem with translations

anon is under 21

[Anonymous No.11722129]

ISOLT was translated into my language by the best translators and one of the few greatest poets of my language. So I guess I'll be reading their work instead of Proust's and have a hell of a good time. Can't say I'm complaining.

[Anonymous No.11722132]

Reminder that Moncrieff is literally better than Proust anyway

[Anonymous No.11722143]

>>11722083
yeah this. its hilarious to see these halfwit bilinguals think that they're having a more profound experience with literature than Proust did just because "i'm reading the exact words that the writer put on the page in his mother tongue!!"

[Anonymous No.11722148]

My only issue with French is that it's too, I'm not sure how to say this, obviously beautiful? Like, there's no room to play around and create beauty out of a uniqueness because the French seem to have a perchant for I guess, surface level beauty? Simple beauty? I don't know what to call it if you guys know what I'm describing. But anyway, I think things that are beautiful in German for that reason. It's cool to see beauty from a harsh language rather than something that's already so flowery with an equally gaudy culture. But maybe that's just me.

[Anonymous No.11722149]

>>11721903
lmao u should know much more than one of them and at least the basics of latin.

[Anonymous No.11722157]

I live in a bilingual country and had French lessons since I was six years old. I have both read translations and original French language books a lot. Lately I enjoy the translations more. I firmly believe that unless you lived in France for a while the translator can capture nuances you would miss.

Oh, but I forgot we're in a shitpost thread for a moment.
>lmao not speaking French is for brainlets baka

[Anonymous No.11722159]

>You're not listening to Bach if you're listening to an orchestra playing Bach
>You're not travelling to Greece if you've got a guidebook
>You're not flying over the Grand Canyon if you're not the pilot in command

I'm starting to tire of people shitting on translators. It's a profession, and one that involves an immense amount of preparation.

Yes, the experience of reading a book in translation is not identical to that of a literate native speaker reading the original. Sad. However, it's closer than the experience of someone who has only a weak grasp on the language trying to parse it with a dictionary on one side and a grammar on the other. That's effectively the same as reading a translation made by someone who doesn't know dick about translating (you). A professional can see the nuances of the source language and do their best to find a way of communicating them in a way you can understand seamlessly.

Sure, if you're passionate about the literature of a foreign language, learn it. No harm in that. And if you get good enough to have a similar level of understanding and innate feel to a professional translator then you can start to get more out of the literature by reading it in the original.

However, realistically that's going to mean dedicating many years of your life to that one goal. It's going to mean living in a place where that language is spoken so that you can develop an instinct for its rhythms and aesthetics. Uprooting yourself from your home culture to immerse yourself in a different way of speaking and reading and hearing.

Now, mad props if you do that. It's a laudable goal that takes a lot of effort and sacrifice but has the potential to expand your appreciation of literature, all the other arts, and life in general.

But no disrespect to the vast majority of people who are not able to make that kind of a commitment. That's why translators have got your back, putting in the years of work and acting as guides to works written in a different language. The money isn't great and the respect is just about non-existent, as one of the main goals is to be as invisible as possible - to let the author speak without allowing the translator's voice to permeate the work. But that doesn't mean that the task of translating is pointless or trivial.

Reading a good translation is as close as you can get to reading the original without upending your life. It's close, it's still valuable, and it can give you a lot of what you would get out of the original if you were a native speaker. Respect for the original is utterly reasonable, but that should not extend to fetishisation.

[Anonymous No.11722179]

Unless you're actually fluent it's useless to read original language. If you only know French from a school setting you will 100% miss things like formal/informal registers, words and phrases only used by certain subcultures, more subtle sarcasm etcetera.

The translator is usually fluent and a good reader so he will notice these things. He is also trained to be able to convert this to your language. This way, you can enjoy the book more deeply.

[Anonymous No.11722189]

>>11722159
To be fair, translators do get some respect by wider audiences. Big authors usually have a fixed translator who is treated as an expert on the author and gets invited to speak about him at literary events. I'll add to this that translators usually are experts on the writer they translate, since often they are in touch with the author while translating. They ask them questions about the intention of certain sentence structures/word usages/...

[Anonymous No.11722194]

>>11722189
This. Its only on /lit/ that I see that absolute disregard for translators and translations. Before I came here I had no idea anyone even thought that way.

[Anonymous No.11722210]

>>11722179
There's a point where you're better off getting, say, 80% of a work in your second language than 100% of it translated into your mother tongue though. The "no translations ever" posters are brainlets but so are the people in this thread insisting that you don't lose anything substantial when you do it.

Also many translations are actually garbage, i.e., English versions of Camus.

[Anonymous No.11722213]

>>11722194
Some things just don't translate well. It's not a disregard but it is going to hamper you.

Poetry doesn't translate well. Divergent languages (like japanese to english) don't translate well. You are going to lose a lot from the original work, but it depends on the circumstances.

[Anonymous No.11722216]

>>11722194
It's just kids thinking that anything that sounds hard is therefore elitist.

[Anonymous No.11722217]

>>11722210
Also if you don't read how are you ever going to approach fluency?

[Anonymous No.11722224]

>>11722210
Camus is an interesting example because he writes a very clean, simple kind of French. I've never read him in translation so I would not know haha.
>>11722217
If fluency is your goal, then reading is perhaps the way to go. But it's a shame that you'll have to reread most books you started with. French movies are maybe a better (although complementary) way to go since you want to know how to pronounce it is well.

English is not my first language but I think I'm fluent enough to read English books without losing anything. But I spend more time reading and communicating in English than my mother tongue so there's that.

[Anonymous No.11722229]

>>11722189
That's marginally true for the superstars - maybe a few dozen translators get some respect from the more dedicated fans of the authors they translate. In the past there was more of a tradition of writer-translators, who also published their own original works and sometimes got reflected interest in their translations, although that doesn't happen so much nowadays.

Personally, I'm a sub-/lit/-tier translator and most of the books I've translated (think coffee table books) don't have my name anywhere on them. In the realm of literature that is not going to make any bestseller lists, translators are seen as extremely minor and replaceable parts. So yes, there's a top level of the foremost literary translators who are noticed on the coattails of the top authors they partner with, but that's the exception.

Probably too low-brow for /lit/, but I found Hofstadter's Le Ton beau de Marot very engaging and entertaining for its take on this area. Lent my copy to a colleague and never got it back - maybe I should get another.

[Anonymous No.11722231]

Even if you learn French, your French wouldn't be good enough for reading Proust

[Anonymous No.11722236]

>>11722217
You've really got to live it. You've got to have a feel for how ordinary people speak on the street, as well as the different ways in which language is used. Yes you have to read, but you also have to talk and hear and experience the language's home culture.

Personally, I'd say the best way is to date/marry a native speaker and integrate with their family in the day-to-day.

[Anonymous No.11722246]

>>11722229
To be fair, there's a pretty long distance between literary superstars and coffee table books hahaha. There's a lot of sub top authors with dedicated translators as well.

In my college (in Europe) we have a big language department where it's actually the norm to study another language (two actually) than our mother tongue. A lot of these professors do translations of "big" authors in the language they specialize in.

[Anonymous No.11722359]

So much gatekeeping ITT

[Anonymous No.11722518]

>>11721761
Mdr po est un pédé
Sage

[Anonymous No.11722553]

>>11721761
>Be a quadlingual
>2 of them are shit tier languages no cares about
My mother tongue is Circassian. We live in Israel so we get taught everything in Hebrew. We are Muslims so we learn some Arabic so we could read the Quran. We learn English from 3rd grade because Israel have a tradition of having English taught since the British mandate times.
Hebrew is useless. Even the majority of Jews in the world don't speak it. Circassian is an ooga booga ancient language that barely has some literature - most of which was written after the 1950s. Arabic is kino and English is English. I tried learning French but my brain just can't handle another language.

[Anonymous No.11722590]

>>11722553
>We learn English from 3rd grade because Israel have a tradition of having English taught since the British mandate times.

I'm pretty sure every country in the world with any sort of public schooling teaches english from around that time.

Aside from that, I've got to give you props for speaking a language I've actually never even heard of before. Ever thought about going to Turkey or Russia and hang out with your kin for a while? I think I'd love to do that.

[Anonymous No.11722604]

>>11722590
>hang out with your kin
Most young Circassians outside Israel don't speak the language. Israel is the only place on earth where a primary school has a majority of Circassian speaking teachers - the books are still in Hebrew though. We don't have a high school so we study with a nearby Jewish high school.
In a couple of decades our language will die outside of Israel.

[Anonymous No.11722626]

>>11722159
These are retarded examples. Language isn't perfect. Any word we choose is the word that best conveys whatever thought or feeling we have, but the word we use is never a perfect means of doing so. Playing Bach is reading sheet music. The notes on your page don't have any ambiguity or open texture.

When you read Proust in French, you're not only getting a different aesthetic experience from the prose due to being in French, you're also getting a more accurate rendering of what Proust was trying to convey.

[Anonymous No.11722765]

>>11722626
So you think the process of translation involves more creativity than musical performance?

[Anonymous No.11722801]

>>11722080
Faux

[Anonymous No.11722825]

y'a combien de français ici? la preuve que je le suis réellement c'est que j'viens de me réveiller après m'être enquillé 10 pastis hier soir

[Anonymous No.11722832]

>>11722626
>The notes on your page don't have any ambiguity
you don't actually play an instrument do you?

[Anonymous No.11722863]

>>11722832
His argument is wrong but it brings up a good point, just like people who play music are interpreting the original score so too are translators interpreting the original text, it's inevitable that their own views and biases are going to slip in no matter how hard they try to be impartial and accurate.

[Anonymous No.11722884]

>>11721761
even proper noun is used in semiotics, help my non french brain

[Anonymous No.11723075]

>>11722863
(Not that anon.) >>11722159 did not deny that translations are interpretations that deviate from the original. But they, just as particular musical realizations/interpretations, are a necessity for experiencing the work of art. If you know ten different languages you can get by without reading translations, and if you're musically really educated you can read the sheet music instead of hearing a performance, but that's a privilege of a tiny minority of people. In practice you have what you have, the middle man does the job to the best of their ability, and that's it. Everyone throughout history read translations, went to concerts, saw plays instead of reading them, etc. These aren't 1:1 reflections of the author's intention, but that doesn't negate their great similarity to the intention, and artistic value.

[Anonymous No.11723153]

>>11722832
There's a huge difference between the degree of ambiguity and limitation of language than there is with playing sheet music.

[Anonymous No.11723871]

Deutsch > Français
Fite me

[Anonymous No.11724507]

>>11722080
Both are adjectives, though 'original' gets sometimes used as a noun by metonymy, ('il m'a donné l'original') but I'm not sure about the nomenclature.

[Anonymous No.11724530]

>>11722066
>>11722149
Stop LARPing. You don't know Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and three other languages.

[Anonymous No.11724548]

>>11721761
Je parle français, mais c'est très mal. Et je ne peux pas lire très bien.
How did I do?

[Anonymous No.11725525]

>>11724548
It wasn't very good desu.

[baguette No.11725641]

>>11721802
#6 most spoken language worldwide
284.9 million francophones

>hurr durr its daing lmao

haha found the cu ck

[Anonymous No.11725652]

>>11725525
How so?

[Anonymous No.11725664]

>>11721802
>>11725641
>1 milliard de francophones en 2060
>Dying language
Source : http://www.imagiter.fr/2017/10/la-langue-francaise-est-une-langue-pour-le-futur-2.html

[baguette No.11725680]

>>11725664
LMAOOOO
>Source is in french
I fucking love 4Chan

[Anonymous No.11725705]

>>11725664
>Francophone Africans will reproduce therefore French will be the language of the future.
yeesh.

[Anonymous No.11725731]

>>11725652
>mais c'est très mal
It's just not something you say in French, definitely some englicism (or whatever language you speak). Just "mais très mal" would be fine.
>Et
In general, you shouldn't just start a sentence with "Et". You could have made just one sentence with the two you used.
>je ne peux pas lire très bien
Again, it's readable but it's just a way of saying it that wouldn't be used. It's usually more "savoir lire" instead of "pouvoir lire" . "lire très bien" should be "très bien lire".
So it's kinda ok really but it's just those small details that make it very obvious that it's not your native language or one you know very well.

[Anonymous No.11725735]

>>11725705
Une langue POUR le futur... Not the language of the future. You guys are terrible at this.

[Anonymous No.11725783]

>>11725680
Friendo. Let me ask you a couple of 3 things. Which country has -with 7.6 children per woman- the highest birth rate in the world? What is the official language of questioned country? How many other countries are comparable to questioned country (religion, poverty yet breeding mentality, etc,)?

Your discovery will also be the reason why the 'western world' is doomed.

[Anonymous No.11725796]

>>11725783
Sounds like a Bing coffee break quiz.
I'm not bothering with this.

[Anonymous No.11725803]

>>11721903
lol you shouldn't call yourself an intellectual

[Anonymous No.11725841]

>>11725796
Let me help you out there. Maybe you see a pattern. And I hope you like Jazz cause the Jazzman will be coming... to your country aswell. Give it a decade or two.

[Anonymous No.11725843]

>>11722626
>The notes on your page don't have any ambiguity or open texture.
WRONG

[Anonymous No.11725912]

>>11725841
Christ, why are they breeding so fast?

[Anonymous No.11726371]

>>11725664
Plot twist: It will be a butchered pidgin and all the speakers will be uncultured Africans and France as we know it will be gone.

[Anonymous No.11726382]

>>11725841
Losing WW2 was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.11726414]

>not speaking at least 1 language of each continent
do you even read, bro?

[Anonymous No.11726454]

>>11721766
>un amoureux de la littérature
>*barfs in frog*

[Anonymous No.11726462]

>>11721761
I rather learn Italian, Russian or German.

[Anonymous No.11726489]

>>11726414
Each continent has an English speaking country.