Re:Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act (2017)
by thaumasiotes on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:41PM
(#23901672)
Poetry is language subject to some constraint, and it's generally impossible to translate it faithfully while also obeying the original constraint. If you look at Disney's song translations, they follow the rhythm faithfully, are pretty good about following the meaning, usually follow the choreography badly, and don't even try to preserve rhyme. (Even in languages in which poetry is supposed to rhyme.)
From another perspective -- there is a lyric in the song Shiny, in Moana, going c'est la vie, mon ami. That's not actually English. How do you translate it from English? This line was translated into Russian as c'est la vie, mon ami. Russians can be expected to be familiar with French, at least at this level. Languages at a greater cultural distance -- including Vietnamese -- don't translate it at all. Intriguingly, the line was translated into French as c'est la vie, mon ami. This preserves the meaning perfectly -- it's more accessible to the French audience than it is to the American audience! -- but it completely loses whatever the implication was of saying the line in French as part of otherwise English dialogue.
It's very difficult to translate anything that simultaneously expresses multiple things. You're doing well when you preserve a single aspect of the original.
From another perspective -- there is a lyric in the song Shiny, in Moana, going c'est la vie, mon ami. That's not actually English. How do you translate it from English? This line was translated into Russian as c'est la vie, mon ami. Russians can be expected to be familiar with French, at least at this level. Languages at a greater cultural distance -- including Vietnamese -- don't translate it at all. Intriguingly, the line was translated into French as c'est la vie, mon ami. This preserves the meaning perfectly -- it's more accessible to the French audience than it is to the American audience! -- but it completely loses whatever the implication was of saying the line in French as part of otherwise English dialogue.
It's very difficult to translate anything that simultaneously expresses multiple things. You're doing well when you preserve a single aspect of the original.