J M Coetzee on his experiences with translators Thread poster: Roomy Naqvy
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Roomy Naqvy 
India
Local time: 20:00
English to Hindi
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Thank you for sending this fascinating and very pertinent article!
Yvette
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I read this fascinating essay a few days ago, and deeply appreciated Coetzee's excellent summary of the challenges a translator faces.
"The necessary imperfection of translation - brought about in the first place by the incapacity of any given target language to supply for each single word in the source language a corresponding single word that would cover, precisely and without overlap, the denotation of the original and its major connotations to boot - is so widely accepted that ... See more I read this fascinating essay a few days ago, and deeply appreciated Coetzee's excellent summary of the challenges a translator faces.
"The necessary imperfection of translation - brought about in the first place by the incapacity of any given target language to supply for each single word in the source language a corresponding single word that would cover, precisely and without overlap, the denotation of the original and its major connotations to boot - is so widely accepted that the translator becomes accustomed to aiming for the best possible translation rather than a hypothetical perfect one." ▲ Collapse
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Thank you for the link.
"what there is to be learned must be learned by observation and practice"
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Gerard de Noord
France
Local time: 16:30
Member (2003)
English to Dutch
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| The Dutch translator could have used a valuable resource | Feb 6, 2006 |
Kim Metzger wrote:
I read this fascinating essay a few days ago, and deeply appreciated Coetzee's excellent summary of the challenges a translator faces.
I read the full article too and loved Coetzee for his approach.
And yet, the Dutch translation problem examples Coetzee gives could have been solved with KudoZ questions. Most of us Dutch KudoZ answerers couldn't translate Coutzee's works professionally but I'm convinced we could have been helpful.
Regards,
Gerard
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Stephen Rifkind
Israel
Local time: 17:30
Member (2004)
French to English
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| Excellent article | Feb 7, 2006 |
Thank you for bringing up this link. It is a pleasure to read a well organized article that has something interesting to say.
Have a nice week.
Stephen Rifkind
Hebrew/Russian/French to English
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A Hayes (X)
Australia
Local time: 00:30
| speaking in tongues | Feb 7, 2006 |
Very interesting article, indeed.
I posted it on ProZ on 28 Jan under the title 'speaking in tongues (J M Coetzee on translation)' http://www.proz.com/topic/41928 but I don't think many people saw it -
[Edited at 2006-02-07 07:52]
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Wenjer Leuschel (X)
Taiwan
Local time: 22:30
English to Chinese
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| The only way to achieve the best possible translation | Feb 11, 2006 |
Kim Metzger wrote:
I read this fascinating essay a few days ago, and deeply appreciated Coetzee's excellent summary of the challenges a translator faces.
"The necessary imperfection of translation - brought about in the first place by the incapacity of any given target language to supply for each single word in the source language a corresponding single word that would cover, precisely and without overlap, the denotation of the original and its major connotations to boot - is so widely accepted that the translator becomes accustomed to aiming for the best possible translation rather than a hypothetical perfect one."
Hi Kim,
As I see it, the only way to achieve the best possible translation would be aiming for a hypothetically perfect one. If we don't do that way, there would be only less than the best ones getting published.
Cheers,
Wenjer
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