Questions tagged [translation]
Questions about translations of works, including how meanings and word choice differ in different languages, and the impact and reasoning of different translations.
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Meaning of the "quips" from Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita
In Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Koroviev - one of Woland's entourage - does a deal with a housing chairman to rent an apartment for his master. As he counts out the money, he makes two ...
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Unique words/vocabulary - Sufficient or necessary condition to determine original source?
Suppose we have two texts that are two different languages of the same story. One is the original, one is a translation. We wish to determine which one was the original. Among the more useful data ...
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What are the Bengali original texts of the poems which Tagore has translated in Stray birds?
I have been reading Stray birds by Tagore.
This link says that some poems in there are translations of the poems in Kanika. Do any records exist which maps the English verses to the original bengali ...
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Why is this line about prophecy in book 2 of the Odyssey thought to be "spurious"?
In my translation of the Odyssey by Emily Wilson, she translates part of a speech concerning prophecy by Eurymachus at the end of book 2 as this:
You know many ancient forms of wisdom,
but if you ...
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In Homer's Odyssey, how can the one-eyed Cyclops have multiple brows?
When Odysseus meets the Cyclops, the text never explicitly states that he has only a single eye. However, the unfolding action in which Odysseus and his crew blind the Cyclops by pushing a stake into ...
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Why do authors present originals as translations?
I read the following passage in the book Is that a Fish in Your Ear?, and the part about originals presented as translations got me wondering why authors do this:
Are readers in fact able to ...
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What was the original meaning of "rolling their eyes"?
While reading War and Peace translators use variants of the phrase "rolling their eyes" in odd places. For example, one character is described as "rolling their eyes in terror". ...
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What form of Formality does Kikuji originally use when talking about Chikako Kurimoto in chapter two?
I am reading Thousand Cranes (千羽鶴, Senbazuru) by Yasunari Kawabata at the moment after finding the slim booklet in my late grandfather's library.
In chapter two, in english titled The Grove in the ...
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How are the Chekov passages handled in the translation of 1Q84?
I'm curious about the Chekov passages which Tengo reads aloud to Fuka-Eri.
Presumably they are in Japanese in the original. Were they copied from an existing Japanese translation of Chekov?
In the ...
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How did Leo Tolstoy approve Maude's English translation of War and Peace? Did he speak good English already?
It is widely known that Maude's English translation of War and Peace was approved by Tolstoy himself. How did Tolstoy approve it, and did he know and speak English?
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What was Koestler's opinion of Hardy's translation of Darkness at Noon?
It is a well-known story that the original German manuscript of Darkness at Noon was presumed lost until relatively recently (2015), well after Koestler's death. The English translation by Daphne ...
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What does the Sanskrit word "abhithiya" mean in the 2022 Booker Prize Winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida?
I'm applying to be the Chinese translator of the 2022 Booker Prize Winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. The publishing house asks me to undertake a sample translation. While completing the task I ...
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"Hamlet" reference in "Crime and Punishment": translator's invention?
I am reading Pevear & Volokhonsky's translation of Crime and Punishment. In part II, chapter 6, Raskolnikov is at the "Crystal Palace" restaurant, where he runs into the clerk Zamyotov ...
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Does the original Russian prose in The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov sound unusual/unconventional to Russian speakers?
I am reading Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson's translation, specifically the 2009 revised version, of Platonov's 'The Foundation Pit', and it has struck me that the prose sounds ...
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Full English translation of Eiji Yoshikawa's novel Musashi
Is there a full English translation of the novel Musashi (『宮本武蔵』) by Eiji Yoshikawa? The one usually available from Charles Terry is abridged.
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Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, the “lost” chapter 10 in German
Is there a German translation of chapter 10 of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin? The English one is available in ISBN 9780691019048."
Pushkin destroyed chapter X of Eugene Onegin, leaving only the ...
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English translation of Corpus Hippiatricorum Graecorum
I'm trying to find a translation of HIPPIATRICA, Hippiatrica Berolinensia, preferably
an interlinear Greek/English version. I'm especially interested in chapter 20 and references to the Greek word &...
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Were new illustrations made for the "SCRAM" picture in translations of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator?
In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the Vermicious Knids first appear as five blobs in elevators, which then contort themselves into letters: S, C, R, A, M, respectively. The original book ...
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Where exactly does Tófa fit into the Saga of Týrfingr, is she the same individual as Sváva?
The wikipedia page for Tófa states shes is the Wife of Angantyr and mother of Hervor:
Tófa (Tófu) is the wife of Angantyr and mother of Hervor in Norse mythology. She is mentioned only once the ...
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Why is "warm" removed in the translated English title of Eberhardt's "In the Shadow of Islam"?
Isabelle Eberhardt's book Dans l'Ombre Chaude de l'Islam has a title whose direct English translation would be "In the Warm Shadow of Islam". My guess is that the word "chaude", ...
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Why did Urquhart choose "neck of a goose" in his English translation of Gargantua?
In Rabelais' Gargantua, in Chapter 13, we find a discussion on the best means to wipe one's bum.
You can find Urquhart's translation here. I am specifically interested in the conclusion:
But, to ...
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What is the Ukrainian equivalent of a community college?
At one point in Voroshilovgrad, Injured and Herman go from the old airport to what's referred to in the books as the community college dorms.
I'm slightly confused by this translation, since I don't ...
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Who translated the 1995 Penguin Popular Classics version of "The Phantom of the Opera"?
I recently started reading the 1995 Penguin Popular Classics version of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. While reading it, however, I noticed that there is no attribution printed in the book ...
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Why is this chunk of the Decameron Day 3 Story 10 left untranslated?
In the Decameron Web full text of the Decameron and English, which uses the Rigg (1903) translation and is hosted by Brown University, a significant chunk of Day 3 Story 10 is left untranslated:
***...
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Why is it so important to Aias that he die in the light as opposed to the mist in "The Iliad"?
In Book XVII of The Iliad, when Patroclus is killed and Zeus has turned the tide to the favor of the Trojans, we have this statement by Aias:
Aias and Menelaos also saw that the victory was passing ...
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Is this instance of "little girl" a translation error in "The Magician of Lublin"?
There's a scene in The Magician of Lublin (part six, section 5) where Yasha is playing cards with Herman, a shady character in Warsaw.
Yasha allowed him to perform several tricks: the trick with the ...
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Has the Maltese poem "Fuq Għoljiet Dingli" ("On Dingli Cliffs") by Victor Fenech been ever translated into any other language?
I've been reading some of the poems of the collection Ċirasa (Under the Cherry Tree) by John Peter Portelli, available at the author's website with a translation to English.
I especially liked the ...
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How much did Alfred the Great translate himself?
I just heard that Alfred the Great, the famous 9th-century king of Wessex who is sometimes said to be the first founder of "England" as a country, was also a translator of literature. ...
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What does "reet fain" mean in Poseidon's message to Agamemnon in the Iliad?
In Book XIV of The Iliad, when Poseidon is encouraging the Greeks while the Trojans are attacking their ships, he says this to Agamemnon while disguised:
But the famous Earthshaker kept no blind man'...
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Is Evil Hole / Malpertugio a realistic name for a district in Naples?
Day 2 Story 5 of the Decameron is set partly in a district of Naples with (at least in the English translation) a striking name that sounds comical and exaggerated. Here follows the translation I'm ...
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How do I choose between a French translation and an English translation of a work written in a language that I cannot read?
Disclaimer: I have asked this question on both French and English Stack Exchange sites, and they both recommended that I ask it here instead. I hope it is on-topic, and apologize if it is not.
I can ...
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Why are "Ser" and "San" left untranslated to "Sir" and "Saint"?
Day 1 Story 1 of the Decameron is about the knavish Ser Ciappelletto, who after his death becomes reputed as the holy San Ciappelletto. In the Rigg translation which I'm reading, these names are left ...
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Why do Athena and Talthybios speak "plainly" in the Iliad?
In Book IV of the Iliad, there are several instances where the translation refers to someone speaking "plainly":
Athena now took the form of a Trojan, the doughty warrior Laodocos Antenor's ...
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What is meant by "traffic" in this list of men's activities?
In the introduction (proem) to the Decameron, the author spends some paragraphs writing about lovesick women and how he hopes his stories may give them some solace as their situation means they're ...
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Why does Aphrodite speak like this while disguised as the old woman?
In Book III of The Iliad, there's an incident where the goddess Aphrodite disguises herself to speak to Helen. The translator wrote her speech like this:
Now she took the shape of an old woman who ...
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Why has this Premchand story been translated as both "Catastrophe" and "A Positive Change"?
There is a Premchand short story whose original Hindi title is "Vidhwans"; it's been translated into English as "Catastrophe", as seen here, but the same story has also been ...
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Who translated "CEO's Wife So Sweet"?
CEO's Wife So Sweet This seems to be an online novel series originally written in Chinese.
The language in the translated end product seems stilted and unnatural to say the least. I am wondering about ...
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Why haven't more of Bernard Werber's works been translated?
Empire of the Ants is a translation of the first in a trilogy of books "Les Fourmis" by Bernard Werber.
Quoting the Wikipedia article:
Les Fourmis (English: The Ants) is a 1991 science ...
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Which Premchand stories are written in Hindi and which in Urdu?
The Indian writer Premchand started off writing in Urdu, and started writing Hindi stories later in his career. According to Wikipedia:
In 1914, Munshi Premchand started writing in Hindi (Hindi and ...
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What is the contemporary translation of this quote from The Art of War?
Guy Debord's 1988 essay “Comments on The Society of the Spectacle” opens with this epigram from Sun Tzu's The Art of War:
However critical the situation and circumstances in which you find yourself, ...
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How to find out if a translation exists?
Is it possible to find out if a translation exists?
Books since 1966 have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number), so a book can be traced to the publisher, and then in theory to the ...
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Are Disney comics "the world's most translated"?
In the bottom-right corner on page 34 of Walt Disney's Kalle Anka & C:o issue number 29, 16th July of 1990, there is this bizarre claim, translated here to English by me:
Disney news
Did you know ...
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Modern English versions of Wonders/Marvels of the East from the Nowell Codex
The famous epic poem Beowulf is known from a single manuscript, part of the Nowell Codex, which also contains other texts and fragments, including one called The Wonders of the East, sometimes also ...
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Options for when a text has not been translated into English from Spanish
Several of Arturo Perez-Reverte's works have been translated into English, but in the case of "El Cid" (Sidi), no English version has been published to my knowledge.
I fear my prospects are ...
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Full English or French online translation of "De pugna avium"
I am trying very hard to find an English (or if not French) translation of the Carolingian poem "De pugna avium" from Theodulf of Orleans. I found a Latin version in the Bibliotheca ...
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Who translated the Baccano! series into English?
I am researching the light novel series Baccano! authored by 成田良悟 (Narita Ryōgo). I haven't been able to find out who the translator(s) is/are. Especially for Vol. 5 (light novel): 2001 The Children ...
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Who is the English translator of "The Man Who Wanted to Know" by Dror Mishani if it is a work of translation?
I am under the impression Mishani doesn't write in English. Wikipedia:
Haish sheratza ladaat hakol (2015; To be published in English during 2016: The Man who wanted to know)
This source claims:
Two ...
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Chilli peppers in fifteenth-century India?
In Canto 7 of The Lusíads, when Vasco da Gama and his crew finally land in Calicut, they encounter a Moor named Monsayeed who explains to the former:
You are now in India, with its various
Peoples ...
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English translation of "Encargo"
Is there an English translation of "Encargo" by Julio Cortázar? I've not been able to find one online.
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English translation of "Onomasticon" by Julius Pollux of Naucratis?
Is there an English translation of the Onomasticon by Julius Pollux of Naucratis?
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