How much does translation matter?
For example; I can get Don Quixote by Edith Grossman, which has a fair amount of positive reviews regarding translation.
Or I can get the Leatherbound Harvard Classics edition that looks amazing but the downside is that I have no idea if the content will be "lost in translation". Or is it a far better translation because Harvard?
How do you pick your foreign books?
>inb4 learn __x__ language.
>>7741095
get the tobias smollett one.
>>7741095
Translation matters above anything else. Kind of a stupid question. It's like asking: "which is more important: the script, casting and cinematography or the DVD casing?".
>>7741095
Translations matter a lot. All of the reasons why Werther is great simply vanished.
>>7741110
I meant it more like the difference in Grossman's translation or the Harvard one, how much would I be missing out on? I care for the aesthetic of a book as well.
I get what you mean though, I'd never get something from Penguin if I wanted to read works of Philosophy for example.
>>7741095
Read the task of the translator by Walter Benjamin
Will explain a lot
>>7741181
Go for the harvard one because its harvard just like getting oxford for philosophy translations.
Bonus points for
>a e s t h e t i c s
Forget the translation meme - here's some remarks on the topic by Borges (The superstitious ethics of the reader):
>So widespread is this superstition that no one would dare admit an absence of style in any works he comes across, especially if these works are alleged 'classics.' There is no good book without stylistic attribution, which no one can do without apart from, of course, the writer. Let us take as our example Don Quixote. Criticism, Spanish criticism, prior to the proven excellence of this novel, had not wanted to consider that its greatest (and, perhaps, its irrecusably single) value was psychological, and attributed to it gifts of style which would strike many as mysterious. In reality, it is sufficient to review a few paragraphs of Don Quixote to sense that Cervantes was not a stylist (at least not in the present acoustic and decorative meaning of the word), and that the destinies of Quixote and Sancho interested him far too much to allow himself to be distracted by his own voice. Baltasar Gracián's Agudeza y arte de ingenio – so laudatory of other prose narratives such as Guzmán de Alfarache – decides not to remember Don Quixote. In jest Quevedo versifies his death and forgets about him. One might object that these two examples are negative; Leopoldo Lugones, in our time, presented this explicit opinion: "Style is the weakness of Cervantes, and the ravages caused by his influence have been very serious. A paucity of color, an uncertainty of structure, gasping paragraphs that never come to an end, devolving into interminable convolutions; repetitions, a lack of proportion, all this was the legacy of those who, not seeing the supreme realization of an immortal work in anything but its form, remained gnawing the helmet whose bumps concealed strength and taste" (El imperio jesuítico, page 59). Our Groussac also commented: "If things must be described just as they are, we will have to admit that a good half of the work is composed in too lazy and slovenly a form, which very much justifies the 'humble language' that Cervantes's rivals have imputed to him. And by this I am neither merely nor mainly referring to the verbal improprieties, the intolerable repetitions or plays on words, or the snippets of weighty grandiloquence that overwhelm us, but to the generally unconscious contexture of this afternoon prose" (Crítica literaria, page 41). Afternoon prose, chatty and not recited prose, this is the prose of Cervantes and he needs no other. I imagine that this same observation would be justified in the case of Dostoevsky or Montaigne or Samuel Butler.
>>7741394
While I do agree Borges should just take Montaine and Carlyle and have a threesome with them, holy shit, how can one man mention the same two authors over and over again at any givem moment?
>>7741181
you're a retard since penguin translations are often the best
>>7741508
Bait
>>7741095
Borges said that it is impossible to make a good translation (even between the same language, like british and american english), so every translation is shit.
>inb4 learn x language
Do you not know what language DQ is written in?
>>7741095
I've read The Lord of the Rings in two languages, and they differ vastly. Though this may be a special case.I also prefer it in translation.
>>7741896
What else did Borges say? Can he also tell me how to make dinner tonight? I'm sort of stuck and running low on ingredients.
Douglas Hofstadter wrote a fantastic book on literary translation titled Le Ton beau de Marot.
>>7742036
>An Italian journalist trying to embarrass Borges asked, ‘Do you still have cannibals in your country?’ Borges replied, ‘No, we don’t. We ate them all. …’
>>7741845
meme
>>7741896
kek, your mind must plays tricks on you, fellow senpai. go and read his essay 'The Homeric Versions'
>>7742382
*playing
>>7742022
Yes because Spanish is the only foreign language on the world. Also I took DQ as an example. What is reading comprehension man.
>>7743264
Something you seem to lack lad.
>>7741096
smollett did a translation? shit, I didn't even know! I'd love to read it. But at the same time I don't know if Sancho Panza requires a subtler touch than Commodore Trunnion.
>>7743417
apparently it's what inspired him to write his other literature.
