Translating Foreign Fiction

[Lip Service]

It seems that translating foreign works is now booming in the UK thanks in part to interest in the works of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo

This article highlights the subtlety and difficulty of translating foreign works

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/24/subtle-art-of-transla...

Have you come across a translated work that you particularly loved or hated? I have disliked the translations that I could get my hands on of Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy In America 

I did love translation of some Japanese works such as Snow Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata, I don't remember the translator but felt it was quite good

I could not stomach the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse even after reading from multiple sources and suspected that the translation was the problem, sure enough it only made sense after reading three  translations simultaneously and finally understanding the underlying meaning. It turns out that some translators were focused on linguistic accuracy and academic minutia (came out too dry and lifeless) while others treated it like poetry (nice but the meaning was not clear at all) 

I don't speak Spanish and cannot imagine what it would be like to read A Hundred Years of Solitude in its original language

[Mandy Muffin]

I thoroughly enjoyed the "Girl With the Dragon" series. The translation was obviously well done or the overwhelming popularity of the series would not have happened in the English speaking world. Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" takes a terrific amount of concentration and patience to read in any language.  So does, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."  But I read Nebo, for one, with his Harry Hole stories and a couple of others that I can't remember now.  Studying languages most of my life, I have translated from French to English and English to French and did the same for Spanish.  I actually have a published short story that I wrote in French, in a cross-cultural program I took in France.  I don't think it will make the best seller list.  I have also read books in the original non-English.  I found that they publish Young Adult translations of some of the classics in both Spanish and French that I found delightful to read as the vocabulary was aimed at about a 4th grader.