I’m not sure how many people run into problems with translations, but I personally feel that I’m on a never-ending quest for the perfectly translated book (poem/novel/short story etc.).  Worse– I’m beginning to suspect it’s a wild goose chase.  Now, for those of you who don’t normally worry about translations, this is a multi-faceted issue.  To explain, I’ll split this into three categories:

1.  A book (see above parentheses) translated from its original into your first language:  for example, a book originally written in French then translated into English.

I read Madame Bovary in English because I’d heard of the novel’s infamous portrayal of adultery in the mid 19^th century and Flaubert’s supposedly outstanding details.  When I read the novel, though, I was very disappointed.  There seemed to be holes in the plot, a lack of explanation for some major events.  I attribute this disappointment to translation and I would think that it would’ve been much more satisfying to have read and understood the novel in its original form.

2.  A book in its original language, which happens to be your second language.

As a French minor, I run into this one quite often.  It’s lovely that I can now read some of my favorite books in their original French, but it is so frustrating when you can’t understand all the big words they use.  It can be compared to trying to read a big-kid book like Harry Potter when you’re in 1^st grade.  In the end, you may come up with the correct overall meaning of a passage, but you’ve missed all the fun because you had to figure all the words out.

3.  Books translated from their original, which is not your first language, into your second language:  for example, a book originally written in Middle English but translated into French.

Books in this category tend to be the most difficult reads.  Last semester I read “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” in French.  The poem has a fairly simple plot and because it’s in verse form it doesn’t have lots of extra wording and description, but it was still very time-consuming.

Each category has its particular weaknesses, but they all bring into play the question of wording vs. plot.  Is it more important as a reader and/or translator to focus in on the words themselves or the overall meaning?  Trying to stay true to the original text is the goal, but you’d also want the new version to be interesting and to flow satisfactorily on its own.  In addition, consideration must be paid towards societal and cultural conventions present in the original, both in wording and in plot.  Then again, there’s the problem of how complex the language is.  Should it be more/less complicated in the newly translated version?  I guess that would depend mostly on the intended audience and their skill level.

I’m not trying to say that all translations are poorly done and I certainly am not accusing translators of a lack of effort.  In fact, there are some really well translated pieces out there; Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf is a more recent example.  I especially appreciate when the original version is on one page and the translation is on the next and I know I’m not the only nerd out there who likes to try to see if they can guess which words match up.  End point being, however, that translating books so that they can be available to everyone is not simply an academic pursuit.  A successfully translated piece is in my opinion more of a triumph than producing decent writing of your own creation.