#untranslateable as well. like. you can translate the essence of the words but not the Vibes. ive tried. you cannot

[lilyliveredlittlerichboy]

i wondered whether it had been a fever dream that there had been a german hit song congratulating on a nice hairdo after going to the hairdressers, which was often quote-sung at anyone with new or slightly unusual hair (including for costumes) at my german high school.

it was not a fever dream.

[aziraphales-library]

Hey! Hope you’re having an amazing week!

I was wondering if you could recommend some kissing fics? That’s literally it haha, just a few fics featuring our favorite boys being in love and having a make out session.

Any ratings are fine with me!

Thank you!

Hi! You can check our #kissing tag for fics like this. Here are some more to add to the collection...

The Right Words by Justanothernerdsstuff (G)

Eventually, Aziraphale was able to find words. “You’re standing in the rain,” Not the right words, but something.

Crowley laughed in disbelief. “Yeah, angel. I am,” He ran his hand through his soaked hair.

Crowley shows up at the bookshop, and can't keep his feelings quiet any longer.

and as we kissed and said goodnight by decafrose (T)

“I just…well, I never quite got around to it,” Aziraphale said. “Is it nice?”

“I mean, sure. Yeah. S’fine.” Crowley shrugged. “Kind of exactly what you’d expect from putting your mouth on someone else’s. Depends on who it’s with, though, sometimes that makes all the difference.”

“Ah. Yes, I see how that would change things.”

Should I Write Us A Love Song, My Dear by animeangelriku (M)

Aziraphale loves kissing Crowley, and he will never tire of kissing Crowley, and he will keep saying so and kissing Crowley for as long as Crowley allows him to, and that’s that.

Crowley makes the sweetest sound when Aziraphale catches his tongue with the tiniest of nips, a devious, pleased smirk twisting the corner of his lips on their next kiss, a gesture that Aziraphale feels down to his bones, to his essence, to the very core of him, where Crowley has made his home.

The Kiss That Was No Oyster’s Fault by SeedsOfWinter (T)

What if Aziraphale and Crowley throughout the ages, but a first kiss of some kind always happens?

In Rome, Aziraphale and Crowley have time on their hands and oysters on their plates...

———

All the taverns in all the cities in all of Creation, and the demon slithered into Aziraphale’s.

There was no mistaking Crowley. All mourning black wrapped and hellfire haired, slouching towards inebriation, there could be no other. There never would be.

blow him a kiss (and you're mad) by orphan_account (T)

Crawly was gazing at Aziraphale with an untranslatable look on his face. His tongue darted out for a second, and his eyes flicked down to Aziraphale's lips.

So there was the translation.

OR

5 times Crowley and Aziraphale almost kissed and 1 time it finally happened.

did you ever fall in love (did you ever dream of falling?) by Imagined (T)

Crowley slides into the comfortable leather seat of the Bentley, the door falling shut behind him. The metallic thud is not enough to get him out of his stupor. He grasps the steering wheel and looks back to the bookshop, inhabiting one angel who - who just kissed a demon. Kissed him. Aziraphale kissed him.

“What the fuck?” he says to himself, and it takes him a full minute to remember that he has to start the car if he wants it to go. Even then, he just stares straight ahead, mouthing ‘what the fuck’ to himself a few more times.

The Bentley takes pity on him, and just drives itself home.

Or:

Five times Aziraphale kisses Crowley after the Armaggedidn't, and one time Crowley finally takes the hint and kisses Aziraphale back.

- Mod D

[carumens]

the violent delights excerpt

some of you have been asking how i’m tackling the topic of translation in my wip “the violent delights”, so here is a small scene so you guys can see the approach i’m trying. hope you enjoy!! give me yor thoughts!

Mr. Dawson picked up a chalk and wrote in the blackboard:

― Why did you leave your father’s house?

― To seek misfortune.

He looked for a place to leave the chalk, and when, apparently, he found none of his satisfaction, he let it fall to the floor. It broke in two symmetrical piece, one of which rolled for a few centimeters before coming to a reticent stop.

   “Translate this,” he said.

I looked at my classmates, but they were all already working on a piece of paper I hadn’t even seen them taking out. I took out my notebook and wrote my translation.

“Well?” he asked, clapping his hands to dust them off. “Who wants to start? Yes, your name?”

“Lukas.”

“Lukas what else?”

 “Gebhardt.”

 “Gebhardt, please, proceed.”

“¿Por qué dejaste la casa de tu padre? Para buscar la desgracia.”

“Okay, well done,” he said. “Next, Highsmith, I’m glad to see you’ve decided to keep on gracing us with your presence.”

She smiled, or maybe she grimaced, I’m still not sure. “¿Por qué abandonaste la casa de tu padre?” she read. “Para perseguir la desgracia.”

“That’s good, as always. Same meaning, a bit more poetic, maybe.”

Lola raised her hand and Dewson signaled for her to speak. “¿Por qué te fuiste de la casa de tu padre?” she said. “Para buscar la desgracia.”

I noticed her accent was different to when she had talked in Spanish to me previously, more precise, more clipped, all trace of the aspiration of the s and the alluring singsong to her vowels gone.

“Very good, very good. Now, your partner?”

I nodded and read my translation. “¿Por qué te fuiste de casa de tu padre? Para buscar la desgracia.”

“Good, once again, well,” he said, turning to André. “The gentleman here is the only one left, please, go ahead.”

André cleared his voice, and with that simple action, I knew there was something he had realized, or maybe he had already know, that we didn’t. “¿Por qué ha dejado la casa de su padre? Para buscar la desgracia.”

Dewson hummed, a please smile curling in his lips. “Your name?”

“André.”

“André,” he said, walking closer to him. “Why have you chosen, unlike the rest of your peers, to use the formal addressing form of ‘usted’ instead of ‘tú’?

“I’ve read the book.”

“Ah! Good answer!” He turned to look at all of us. “There will never be two translations that are the same, just like there will never be two books that are the same. Even if we are given the same idea, the same characters, the same plot points and even the same writing style, two different people will always, always, write different books. It’s the same with translations: there are as many translations as there are translators, and all of them might be correct and valid. Taking this into consideration, can the perfect translation exist?”

He let the idea hang in the air, his face expectant and bright as he looked at each of our faces. I was debating with myself whether it was a rhetoric question or not. When none of us answered he clapped his hands twice, as if to wake us up.

“No,” said Lola.

“Now, all of your translations were perfect semantically, syntactically and grammatically speaking,” he said, bowing his head slightly at Lola. “But pragmatically? André’s was the best. Why?”

“Because I had a context.”

“Exactly. In our example, the main difficulty was the complete inexistence of a formal pronoun in English, a pronoun we do find in Spanish and many other langauges. How do we know when to use the formal pronoun if there isn’t one in English? One word: context.” He turned around, wrote the word on the blackboard and circled it three times. “It is very difficult to translate without a context, specially so in literary translation, where one word is not only its denotative meaning. That is why, before translating a book, you have to get to know it as good as if you had written it yourself.

 “If you translate, to follow with our example, ‘Ulysses’, you must be sure that what you translate is what James Joyce himself would have translated. Know the book, not the origin language, know the target language, and know what you want to say and how you want to say it. As long as you have you have your solid, justifiable reasons, your translation might be more than valid.”

“But how can there be more than one perfect translations?” asked Lukas, his face creased in a perfect frown.

“I never said there could be more than one perfect translation,” countered Dewson. “I said there could be more than one valid translation, because, in fact, as our friend ―what was it, sorry?”

“Heredia Cortés.”

“As our friend Heredia pointed out, the perfect translation does not exist,” he said. “Not because translator are faulty in any way, but because languages are, simply, untranslatable.”

“What?” I said.

Dewson laughed and pointed at Kendra. “Highsmith, we talked about this on your first year here at St. Jerome. Care to explain to your mates?”

Kendra straightened up and said, “Languages are not mathematical equations in which five plus five equals ten. There are twists and turns and whole sets of mentalities behind words and expressions. Precisely because languages are not mathematics, there cannot be a perfect translation, because they would cease to be what they are in essence.”

“And what are they?”

“A tool to communicate, to express, to feel. And as a tool, it’s ductile, it changes with time and space and circumstances and even mental conditions of the speakers.”

“But, then, why are we even here?” asked Lukas.

“I don’t know,” answered Dewson. “Why are you?”

 Lukas huffed and burrowed himself deeper in his beige mackintosh.

“Let me illustrate this to you,” said Dewson. “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

A pause, two snorts, three frowns.

“How do we say it Spanish,” urged Dewson.

“Está lloviendo a cántaros,” said Kendra.

“That is certainly the correct translation. But is it perfect?”

“Yes,” said Lukas.

“No,” said Dewson. “That is the correct translation of the sense of it, but what about the words? This translation is valid as an everyday expression, used by the people in the streets or in a newspaper. But what about if we find it in a literary text?”

“I don’t know,” said Lukas. “I’d have to see.”

“You’re right, you’re right. Take, for example, these lines:

               “Está lloviendo a cántaros

               llenos de mi propia sangre

               me ahogo dentro de mis venas

               dentro de mí mismo muero.”

No one had an answer, so none was given.

“As translators, you will have to solve this and many more questions. Form or contents? Image or meaning?” said Dewson. “Don’t fret just because you don’t know how to yet, that is why you are here: to learn. For the moment, I want you to think for a solution for the aforementioned problem in the poem I recited.”

[heinzpilsnerbloody]

It's time for another boring translation post

Well, I rested a bit and decided to tell you something else about TYO-translation :’D Maybe there are people who will be interested hope dies last.

Today I want to analyze the stake-steak scene from “Nasty”. 

As I already said, the most difficult things for translation are those in which a wordplay is displayed visually. Words are just words, they can be thrown away (although it’s better not to do so, of course), or rewriten as it would be better to translate, but the picture is something with which you just can’t disregard. In this sense, I suppose, it’s much easier to translate books: until readers compare with the original, they will never know that instead of, let's say, a seal there was an elephant (if that elephant wasn’t important for the plot, of course). But if a viewer sees an elephant on the screen, then there is only one way out for you: to saddle the elephant. Good luck, brave translator!

(Perhaps I'll do another post with a compilation of my translations of such plays with idioms in TYO, there are plenty of them).

But now about the steak-stake.

In this case, of course, there were no elephants, but it’s not such an easy task to explain to a Russian viewer why one guy ran to the car and the other to the fridge in response to this instruction:

...Well, actually, the first part of the task is much easier due to a well-turned coincidence in the structure of languages: the Russian word "вогнать" [vognát’] (to drive), included in the fixed phrase “вогнать кол” ("drive a stake"), is also used in the context of "drive a car". 

(Well, just wait a bit: this part of the phrase will play a nasty trick on a translator later in combination with the next part). 

But with the stake-steak in Russian you stumble upon the problem immediately. 

The Russian word "кол" [kol] (stake) has nothing to do with meat, and it can’t be thrown out, because it’s part of a fixed phrase, the first half of which is so well suited for translation. Any other phrase with “drive" in it just would sound unnatural and wouldn’t be associated with the vampire theme. Sooo?

Well, the only word in Russian, related to food and at least a bit similar to the "кол" in sounding, is "кола" [cóla] (yes, a well known drink). And, for better or for worse, Russian nouns have declination - depending on the place in the sentence, a word can have different forms. Thus, the word "кол" can be transformed into “колу” [kolú], “коле” [kolé], “кола” [kolá]. And the word "кóла" - hurray! - has almost the same forms (although, alas, they have different accentuations). Therefore, if you choose the appropriate form of the word and replace the "steak" in the Neil’s subsequent exclamation with the "cola", it’s theoretically possible to achieve the desired effect in subtitles (I was lucky that the contents of the fridge weren’t shown in the frame - it gave me the opportunity to say that there was nothing inside at all except one sausage, and it helped a little to muffle the meat theme). 

But. There is no way that you can save the phrase "Нам нужно вогнать кол" (”We drive a stake”) unchanged and convert the word "кол" into the desired form in the same sentence. It’s necessary to transform the verb “вогнать” into the participle "вогнанный" [vógnanny] (for example, in the phrase "Как насчёт кола, вогнанного в сердце?" - "What about a stake driven into his heart?"). 

But. “Кола” in Russian is a feminine noun, while “кол” is a masculine one, so their participial forms don’t coincide - for “кола” it’s "вогнанная" [vógnannaya] (and in the form of the example sentence - even “вогнанной”). For English speakers, these differences in letters may seem insignificant, but Russian viewers would instantly notice the discrepancy. And in all other variants of the phrase the word "вогнанный" spoils everything. Every time when it seems to you that you have found a solution, it eludes you, bastard.

Means no luck here. And what could I do?

There was one thing left - to divide the sentence into two, so that one contained the verb "вогнать", and the other - кола/колу/коле. 

But. 

Another problem that the show format creates is the timing problem. When you translate a book, you don’t have to worry about the length of the translated phrase - the main thing is that it accurately reflects the original style and meaning. But if the actor pronounces a certain phrase at a certain pace, inserting something much longer in the translation is a rather dubious idea - people just don’t have time to read your subtitles, and besides, it looks very unnatural. In my subtitle program such cases are marked in red, and I try to make this happen as rarely as possible. 

So, you either need to abandon the long phrase, or...

... Well, in some way I was lucky: the joke about Peter Cushing was completely untranslatable into Russian (by the way, as well as 90% of jokes about proper names so I hate them), didn’t make much sense and wasn’t played out in any way visually, so I could afford to capture its time interval (I just replaced “cushion” with the “cola” as well, which looked natural). 

Sorry, Peter Cushing, I had to sacrifice you. 

So, the final translation sounds like: 

(”Got it! We drive it into the heart! I'm talking about a steak(cola)”) 

... Well, actually, my beta said it sounds like one of Mike's typical ambiguous phrases, so it wasn’t such a bad solution, I suppose. And as you can see, timing is normal now.

Oh, it was really difficult :’D Well, in the process suffered Peter Cushing, cushion, steak and a vegetarian sausage (it's really a pity), but dammit, it was a war of timing and verbal forms, and I fought as best I could. 

Of course, you can always just insert the essence of a wordplay in parentheses directly into a text, but I don’t like doing that: I always try to translate so that my subtitles can be voiced in Russian naturally and without loss of meaning, if there is such an opportunity. It just seems to me more professional (although, I'm an amateur, after all).

The end :’D

[translatetwo]

On the Motha of all Haikus, 01/03

This will be a triple post on a very famous Haiku.

The second on a special event on November 2019 when I tried to connect the Haiku and its final line with the paradoxical causalities we find in Quantum Physics. 

And the third on recent media representations of its text and context on YouTube.

I am of course talking about Bashō’s poem about a certain pond and a certain frog hopping in.

By which hint I have already given away the punch line. 

Which is almost inevitable, as the poem, with good reason THE paradigmatic haiku, IS nothing but a hint that consists of nothing but a punch line.

Of 17 syllables. 

Here it is, in transcribed japanese:

furu ike ya

kawazu tobikomu

mizu no oto

http://www.carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/text/view/1

Some of those morphems are untranslatable, functional elements of Japanese, some are simple words.

Oto, for example, is sound.

Kawazu is frog, probably even a specific species of frog. 

Ike is pond. 

But ya is an exclamation that is hard to translate, but probably the most Japanese, and the most haiku-specific about the whole poem.

That “ya”, something to the effect of “see!”, or “go!” or “here!” is transporting the whole weight, or rather lightness, of the very essence of the haiku: Its power to capture one moment, one trans-personal glance, yet to be had by one contingent person, in a moment that is still, paradoxically, creating a home for the eternal.

Well, the eternal, the Japanese way.

All the more significant that this exclamation, as if to mimic what everyone knows about the Japanese sense of politeness, is not the first thing we hear of the poet and his brief poem, but a suffix, rather downward curving sound, completing the first line of just three. 

Which brings us to the tricky question of a “good translation”.

Well, there are many. They vary, as the European languages (I have only checked German and English translations) differ from the Japanese.

Even without any knowledge of the original, one can easily dismiss most of the efforts as rubbish. For a very, very good poem -- and this is one -- can never be correctly translated by a lousy one, no matter the difficulty or distance between the two languages.

And in another respect, some of those translations are just signs of the time and the culture that produced them. For it is almost a historico-cultural law that once a translation -- or a forgery, for that matter - ages it quickly becomes alienated from the original it wanted to translate, or imitate to the point of indiscernibility, to transform into a simple item standing in just for its own time and culture, usually not winning anyone’s heart for that past state of affairs.

Take a look at this translation by Eli Siegel: 

Pond, there, still and old!

A frog has jumped from the shore.

The splash can be heard.

To be found on a page with a lot of English translations:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm

I have not researched this, but I bet this is not a recent one. It bears the mark of a by now obsolete effort to add unnecessary, narrative stuff to a statement of perfect clarity and brevity to make it “understandable to the Westerner”, as one might assume.

An utterly senseless effort, as the “Westerner” can either understand the universal charme of the poem with the very same organ of pure spontaneity that Basho employed when creating it.

Or they do not understand it at all.

Whoever has properly “understood” that lengthy report quoted above, has for sure not understood Basho's poem at all.

So why bother?

Why, to name just one troubling element of that highly useless translation -- why add a “shore” to the scenario?

We have the elements pond and frog and a jumping, and a sound.

That is enough.

Can the “Western Reader” not be trusted with the mental ability to add the unnamed shore to the scenario?

And while we are doing as Bashō did, and not name a shore, we might really grasp what it means to leave out unnecessary information.

Or, to go even one step further: Is it even correct, does it even honour the very truth happening in this  poem, and in a way actually creating that poem, through its author rather than by him, to name a “shore”?

For it is one thing to point out that a shore was at play, even though that pointing out is redundant.

And still another thing to add a shore to the narrative that in a deep and highly relevant sense is actually not even part of the scene. Is not and cannot be.

Why?

Because the poem takes us into the frog, even though we are also, at once, outside of the frog. We are both the frog, and beholding the frog. And to the frog, as an autonomous creature having a vital relationship to the body of water mentioned in the first line, the shore is not a thing. The very edgeness of the water’s edge is to an amphibious creature such as the frog not the clearly marked threshold it is to humans. It would rather be a zone of fluid transition. 

Yet where there is no line, no clear border, no sharp limit, there is no reason to name a shore. 

It is one thing to see a frog on the shore of a pond and create an image of the items animal, shore and pond as things outside, being put into a synthesis by the external human eye. 

And a completely different affair to enter, or rather leap, into the poetics of the haiku that manages to leap with us, as frog, through the frog, into that pond.

Of course you can be one of those nosy academics and point out that the supposed success of the haiku to make us take the frog’s point-of-view, or point-of-leap, is every bit as “anthropocentric” and “ontologically naive” as Mr. Siegel’s talk of a shore.

Still, there is a difference.

And the difference makes poetry.

                            So, to cut my journey short: I have to dismiss most translations for being inappropriate and too ignorant of the very spirit of the poem, and the Haiku at large.

Yet I also take issue with even the most literal and ascetic translations, such as this one by Harold G. Henderson:

Old pond

  and a frog-jump-in

       water-sound

http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm

This translation is making some effort to “re-create” the Japaneseness of the poem in English.

Yet we could say that the mixing up of a technical “interlinear translation”, hence a word-by-word-translation that is not really respecting the rules, the style and the grammar of the target language, and a truthful translation is a trap.

It is as much of a contemporary trap, as the stuffy narrative quoted earlier has been the trap of a previous age.

After all - a translation needs to be a TRANSLATION, and not the mere staging of the properties of one language in another. 

Yet even if we find merit in the reduced, Japanesing second and third line, the very lack of true poetic thought is apparent from the clueless first line that simply sticks to the most common version we all know so well.

Ah, the old pond. 

Well, I take issue with the lack of any rendering of the “ya” that I have mentioned before.

Still: The one thing everyone seems to agree on, no matter the differences of translation in all other respects, is the “old pond”.

I take issue with that too, as it is inviting all sorts of heavy, nostalgic clichés the poem is actually free of.

It might not have been created yesterday, but there is nothing old or nostalgic about it.

So is it really necessary to have it start with the word “old”, thus painting the whole scenario in sentimental colours as if one were to use the semantic equivalent of a “Instagram filter”?

One might reply: But “furu” means old, does it not?

I could once again try to leap into the leaping frog and point out that to the frogs, as timeless as their existence is, and as timeless their relationship to their habitat, the pond, any mention of its age seems as misleading and out of place as the mentioning of a “shore”.

So if we praise Bashō for not bothering with shores frogs would not bother with … why point out the age of the pond?

I am unfortunately not capable of speaking Japanese, but just like all of you I can google about. 

And so I checked out if “furu” has other meanings.

It turns out that it does.

According to this site “furu” can also mean used and second-hand

http://www.romajidesu.com/dictionary/meaning-of-furu.html

If we stay closer to this meaning, the further definition of the pond the poem is opening with is not referring to its old age and the nostalgia attached to it, but to the fact that it is used.

It is not an ornamental pond, we could surmise in a bold conjecture, but a used one. It does not offer itself to a merely disinterested, merely aesthetic gaze, it is an everyday pond for everyday use. 

It is a familiar pond, not one freshly made.

It is a pond one would normally not notice at all.

Now that to me rings far closer to the spirit of the poem than any reference to old age.

For it points at the very paradox of the poem to even exist.

The poem only refers to things so utterly familiar that one would normally not notice them and hence not make poems about them, as poems are, after all, tools to pay specific attention to specific things in order to store them in a specific memory bank. 

And what is more: Not only does the poem mention things not worth mentioning, it also makes an effort, a crazy, mad, leaping effort, to honour that fact of not-noticing while noticing.

While cutting out the very image of a pond, so familiar, so inconspicuous that no one would ever mention it, notice it, not even the frogs who rely on it as the very sphere of their existence, it still wants to deny just that, it still wants to protect that pond from any glaring attention.

It acts like a flashlight so brief that it makes the pond disappear again in the very split second it briefly shows up.

Disappear again into the safe, hidden space it existed in before the poet and his poem came along.

And it succeeds in this impossible effort of being so effortless,

not least by changing from sight to sound in its third and final line.