Re:German expressions that don’t exist in English
by mumblemumble on Monday December 30, 2019 @10:46AM
(#21914065)
I don't know about "correctly", but it can definitely be difficult to translate a really good phrase from one language to another in a way that retains both the power and the meaning.
For example, Shakespeare is somewhat famously difficult to translate into French. Much of what's great about his writing is in the level of density he was able to achieve by playing with certain parts of English grammar's plasticity, and the strong rhythm he gets by playing with sounds. In French, it's easy enough to translate the meaning, but stricter rules about the use of articles and some characteristics of the language's word morphology make it really hard to achieve the same density, and differences in the phonology make it harder to achieve the same drumming rhythm.
Double meanings are also tricky. Different languages offer different opportunities for play with ambiguity, because they generally don't have the same patterns of polysemy.
For example, Shakespeare is somewhat famously difficult to translate into French. Much of what's great about his writing is in the level of density he was able to achieve by playing with certain parts of English grammar's plasticity, and the strong rhythm he gets by playing with sounds. In French, it's easy enough to translate the meaning, but stricter rules about the use of articles and some characteristics of the language's word morphology make it really hard to achieve the same density, and differences in the phonology make it harder to achieve the same drumming rhythm.
Double meanings are also tricky. Different languages offer different opportunities for play with ambiguity, because they generally don't have the same patterns of polysemy.