Speaking about the Literary Translation, the best translations, those that actually get closest to the author in spirit, are those which do not stick close to the language details of the original, do not  ‘metaphrase’ or paraphrase, but rather those where the translator was willing to go a little farther off and find in his/her own language \ even if in words with somewhat different terrains and a different grammatical structure for the sentence/ a genuine equivalent of the complex ideas and tones of the author. What emerges is the one which is slightly more free is the best because the author is reliving the thought and feeling, really imagining it in his or her own mind and feelings and writing out of that.

1. Read the book and generalize the main idea and a concept.

2. Project this idea onto your own language culture.

3. Define the language means conveying the message.

Accordingly, before embarking on the rendering of a book a translator establishes a set of priorities to help shape it. To create a cultural context more suited to the target language speakers and avoid completely the common practice among translators- just translate the words of the originals- a translator has to do a lot of thinking and a lot of research.

“Like all translations, it’s just infinitely intricate. I always say it’s like opening up the back of a fine watch and getting in there with the world’s smallest tools.” (A Canadian playwright and translator John Murray)

While some problems with translations are common among all languages, translating from any Western European language to a Slavic one carries the additional problem of grammar. Slavic grammar is complex, and developed differently than in other European languages, which means that sentences have to be construed in a very different manner. Many of those things that are said with the use of idioms in English need to apply special grammatical structures in Russian.( More about idioms find in my recent posting)

It’s the kind of work you can only do with love. You have to love every syllable of the text. And you have to think everything that has to have meaning and resonance.

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Tags: Literary Translation, Translation Art

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Russian Translation, Translation Art, Translation English to Russian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.