Is reading great literature in the original languages a meme?

[Anonymous No.13890210]

Does it really enhance the experience and understanding?
Do translators routinely either unintentionally or intentionally distort the meaning of text?
Are great translations a thing? are they easy to find?

[Anonymous No.13890227]

Flavius Josephus was a jew.

[Anonymous No.13890248]

>>13890227
correct

[Anonymous No.13890262]

>>13890210
>Does it really enhance the experience and understanding?
In my experience, yes. I've read books in seven languages, sometimes alongside the translation and I can say without a doubt that reading in the original language is always a richer and more profound experience.
>Do translators routinely either unintentionally or intentionally distort the meaning of text?
The more different a language is from the language being translated into, the more likely a translation is to suffer, not because the translator wants it that way, but rather because of linguistic necessity. Translating from French to English, you won't lose a lot (though you'll still lose something). Translating into English from Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, any non-indo-European language, or pretty much any language that isn't Western European and you're going to lose a lot. In my opinion, Ancient Greek is an untranslatable language. In those cases, you can only roughly approximate the meaning and beauty of the text. It's like trying to repaint The Birth of Venus using crayons. The tool (presumably English, which is a heavily degenerated language) simply cannot do the job well no matter how talented the translator.
>Are great translations a thing? are they easy to find?
Yes, they're a thing and to know if a translation is good you'll have to know the original language or else defer to an expert. It's important to know that great translations usually take on a life of their own, apart from the original text. It's better to view them as independent works of art. Pope's Iliad isn't Homer's Iliad, but it's still worth a read even though you can't say after you've finished it that you've "read Homer." In my opinion, translations should always be viewed as separate from original texts, mere linguistic gestures towards another world, obscured mountains of meaning.

[Anonymous No.13890272]

>>13890262
curious, in what way is English degenerated? is it incapable of beauty?

[Anonymous No.13890276]

>>13890210
Only if it isn't a dead language.
Thus spoke Zarathustra is shit in English.

[Anonymous No.13890350]

>>13890272
Just really utilitarian to the point where it's just bare bones basic concepts. Doesn't leave much room for poetic beauty or intricate description.

[Anonymous No.13890380]

>>13890272
Modern english has practically no noun declensions. Also what's wrong with reading shit writ in english?

[Anonymous No.13890386]

>>13890380
French doesn't have noun declensions either.

[Anonymous No.13890398]

>>13890386
Hungarian has 18 cases. Get on our level.

[Anonymous No.13890400]

>>13890386
Makes sense because French is constantly sited as a relatively simple language on this board

[Anonymous No.13890405]

>>13890380
>cases = good

[Anonymous No.13890415]

>>13890272
I wouldn't say that it's incapable of beauty, that depends on the speaker; however, linguistic degeneration has happened to all modern languages, but English is one of the most degenerate for sure. It would be too much to explain it. I think your best bet is to read Beowulf in the original and compare that to Chaucer; then compare Chaucer to Shakespeare; then compare Shakespeare to any modern poet. If you read English poetry diachronically you'll notice its subtle degeneration. You can do this with any language really. American English I think is the most degenerated of all dialects, due to the influence of AAVE on the general populace. To give you a very clear example though, the loss of a case system in any language is a sign of linguistic degeneration. This has happened almost entirely to English. Any tendency towards simplification is usually degeneration and shows that a people don't care enough about their language to maintain its full robustness. They don't take their linguistic inheritance seriously. Modern American English is a great example of phonetic simplification too. Due to the influence of AAVE, Americans are enunciating their words less and less, words are losing sounds. People can't seem to speak the language seriously anymore. The average vocabulary of American English is shrinking generationally, another sign of degeneration. I think a good sign of what Americans value will be easily observable from the remaining words in the vocabulary of the average American speaker in the next few hundred years (when the average vocabulary is only a few thousand words). Phonetic, morphologic, syntactic simplification. If things don't change, it won't be long before American English will be as good as any boom-boom-cluck-cluck African-tier language.

[Anonymous No.13890431]

>>13890415
Not him.

Interesting, although I'm not sure degeneration is avoidable at all in the long run. Which are the "purest" languages in your opinion? The ones that are the least degenerated. I imagine Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin are up there, but what else? Classical Chinese, maybe?

[Anonymous No.13890449]

>>13890415
The cause for this is probably so more people can write and read as time goes on. Peasants were kept dumb as fuck by the aristocracy, and probably the freemasons, for centuries. Just in the twentieth century have world classics become widely available.

[Anonymous No.13890499]

>>13890431
You're right. I don't know how linguistic degeneration can be avoided. For speakers of Western European languages at least, the best thing that could be done is to ensure that Ancient Greek and Latin are more widely taught. I would support making them obligatory to know at least basically, in order to get into any higher education so as to force high schools to teach the languages.
This would like improve universities as well by filtering out a lot of chaff. Of course that'll never happen. It's not even a requirement to know English well (or at all sometimes) anymore to get into universities.

But to your list the only language I'd add would be Avestan, and perhaps Hittite. I can't really speak for non-Indo-European languages, since I haven't studied any of them. I imagine Classical Chinese is a stunning language, given how beautiful Classical Chinese civilization was.

[Anonymous No.13890519]

>>13890449
Yeah, I think there is a strong link between literacy as well as the spread of public education, and linguistic degeneration. Some people find this ironic but ideally education would only serve those capable of being truly educated. The rest would be better off without any education. Truly they'll get more out of life without all the unnecessary thinking. Most people who are capable of only a half-education (or less) generally tend to destroy whole nations with time due to their own hubris and intellectual blindness. Quote below related.

"It's the half-educated, as usual, who's the enemy. He always is. The Wise Men and the shepherds both knelt in Bethlehem.”

[Anonymous No.13890532]

>>13890519
what is linguistic degeneration? why are cases better than word order?

[Anonymous No.13890538]

>>13890499
that's not degeneration that's change

[Anonymous No.13890539]

>>13890519
wise is the man who has the power to do wrong but refrains from doing so kind of thing

[Anonymous No.13890546]

>>13890350
this is complete bullshit. all languages are capable of describing things intricately

[Anonymous No.13890548]

>>13890499
>I imagine Classical Chinese is a stunning language, given how beautiful Classical Chinese civilization was.

It's more or less like Sanskrit in that it was intentionally "frozen" as a language by strictly codifying its grammar and vocabulary.

I think it's telling that ever since Classical Chinese stopped being the literary language of China in 1919 the Chinese haven't produced anything earth-shattering.

Even the works that were previously written in vernacular Chinese, like Water Margin, were written by people who had a firm handle on Classical Chinese.

Nowadays nobody besides literary scholars really learn it just like nobody learns Latin and Ancient Greek in the West anymore unless we're talking about classicists, and even then, from what I've heard, the standards have dropped severely among them.

[Anonymous No.13890589]

>>13890350
let me respectfully disagree with you. I have a romance language as my mother tongue and think that English is very good for poetry. for instance, it almost never sounds pedantic and boring

[Anonymous No.13890729]

>>13890532
For your first question, see >>13890415.
As for your second question, what you're asking is: why is having more possibilities for word order better than having less possibilities? It's a somewhat nonsensical question. But I would implore you to study a language with a case system to see how much flexibility and creativity they afford you. It's astounding. Ease of expression is doubled. And the language feels fresh and new. You gain more control of the language, a firm grasp, like you truly own it, and therefore you gain more linguistic and poetic freedom. As opposed to being restrained syntactically. So yeah, it's basically a question of syntactic freedom. And syntactic freedom implies a whole issue of other types of linguistic freedom.
>>13890538
Change must be qualified as either good or bad. If change makes something worse in demonstrable ways, then it's degeneration. Just learn Middle and Old English, my friend. See for yourself. I can talk all day and it won't replace you simply studying the language diachronically.
>>13890548
Super interesting and sad as well. Things won't change until people stop viewing language under purely utilitarian terms, and start viewing it as something to maintain and build upon, as an inheritance. Language is the only thing that makes me suspect mankind's divine origins. It's a miraculous phenomenon and I hate to see people throw away their linguistic inheritance. Usually this happens at the same time they throw everything else they inherit too.
>>13890589
>for instance, it almost never sounds pedantic and boring
I think you're a victim of being ESL here. It's much harder to note tone in a foreign language. It has taken me years to understand when the French are being ironic or condescending. But I think you're right that English can be good for poetry, in the right hands at least. I think Yeats gave good indications for how English poets should write stylistically, that is, to concentrate heavily on its Germanic roots. I think the best English poetry tends to harken back to Old English at least phonetically, if not morphologically.

[Anonymous No.13890751]

>>13890729
free-er word order means stricter morphology

[Anonymous No.13890759]

>>13890532
Because they allow for freedom of word order and freedom of word order allows for greater dynamic range when writing poetry, seeing that you can place words almost wherever to highlight them for dramatic effect. This is partly what makes Roman and Greek literature a joy to read and why much of it can't be translated into English.

[Anonymous No.13890772]

>>13890759
i get this but i feel these people are overstating the case for clearly very /pol/-tier purposes

[Anonymous No.13890778]

>>13890729
Chaucher's heavily french middle english sounds cool as fuck though

[Anonymous No.13890781]

>>13890729
the stupidity in this is palpaple. English has an incredibly complex morphology and phonology and vocabularly.

[Anonymous No.13890810]

>>13890415
>I wouldn't say that it's incapable of beauty, that depends on the speaker; however, linguistic degeneration has happened to all modern languages, but English is one of the most degenerate for sure. It would be too much to explain it. I think your best bet is to read Beowulf in the original and compare that to Chaucer; then compare Chaucer to Shakespeare; then compare Shakespeare to any modern poet. If you read English poetry diachronically you'll notice its subtle degeneration. You can do this with any language really. American English I think is the most degenerated of all dialects, due to the influence of AAVE on the general populace. To give you a very clear example though, the loss of a case system in any language is a sign of linguistic degeneration. This has happened almost entirely to English. Any tendency towards simplification is usually degeneration
and shows that a people don't care enough about their language to maintain its full robustness.
Linguistic change is 100% impossible to prevent
They don't take their linguistic inheritance seriously.
Learn PIE
Modern American English is a great example of phonetic simplification too. Due to the influence of AAVE, Americans are enunciating their words less and less, words are losing sounds.
this literally happens in every language all the time was the Greek of Plato more "degenerated" than the Greek of Homer? Was Homeric Greek a vale shadow of PIE?
People can't seem to speak the language seriously anymore. The average vocabulary of American English is shrinking generationally, another sign of degeneration.
probably true, though not inherent to English in any sense
I think a good sign of what Americans value will be easily observable from the remaining words in the vocabulary of the average American speaker in the next few hundred years (when the average vocabulary is only a few thousand words).
citation?
Phonetic, morphologic, syntactic simplification.
English is incredibly complex in all those areas.
If things don't change, it won't be long before American English will be as good as any boom-boom-cluck-cluck African-tier language.
>hurr durr click sounds

[Anonymous No.13890826]

>>13890778
I agree. I think Chaucer carved out another great path for English style. But one could say that Chaucer was more European than English. His poetry feels more like that of the Provençal troubadours than anything. Still a good path. The Germanic path of Yeats is just one that I'd like to see more people follow, given that we've already had several great Latinate poets like Shakespeare and Milton.
>>13890781
Lazy insult and reply. Try again.

[Anonymous No.13890872]

>>13890759
it's also what turns some people off. to me that doesn't come off as impressive, rather I feel betrayed by the author's pedantry, which lots of times is not even on them, since there's just so much room for that in such languages. I'm not saying one is objectively better than the other, but the appeal for some does not hold for everyone

>>13890729
good point, maybe I just can't tell well enough the level of pedantry within an English text to compare between these two languages, but I actually thought I didn't like reading before I started reading in English. hopefully you can see what I'm talking about and I'm not coming off as a boo

[Anonymous No.13890991]

>>13890810
Your post was all over the place, but if you know of any resources for PIE, I'd appreciate any recs.
>>13890872
That's interesting. May I ask what your native language is? I know that any time I learn a new language, reading in that language somehow opens up literature for me again. I wonder if we just have a desire for linguistic novelty.

[Anonymous No.13891005]

>>13890415
WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS

[Anonymous No.13891027]

>>13891005
Honestly, fuck off to /b/ if long replies bother you. This is a literature board.

[Anonymous No.13891029]

>>13890826
English has twice the number of vowel sounds of a typical European language

[Anonymous No.13891037]

>>13890729
>Change must be qualified as either good or bad. why though?

[Anonymous No.13891101]

>>13890991
I don't doubt that, but I only speak retarded (Brazilian) Portuguese and English so I can't tell whether it's what draws my interest for English literature

[Anonymous No.13891138]

[Anonymous No.13891178]

>>13890350
English collects different nuanced ways of saying the same thing. Most languages tend to avoid this. Or at least don't adopt it to the extent that English speakers do. We love it. New words all the time. I don't know Japanese but I think they are similar.

[Anonymous No.13891181]

>>13891138
What the fucking hell is MA?

[Anonymous No.13891187]

>>13891181
Mandarin

[Anonymous No.13891216]

>>13891101
Portuguese is a great language. In my opinion it's the most underrated of the great Romance languages. But I bet English is fun for speakers of Romance languages, so similar and yet so different.

[Anonymous No.13891236]

in my opinion, if you can't read latin you are worthless scum