730 registrants

Networking event for Poetry & Literature translators

Aug 7, 2013

Group discussion

How close does one have to stick to the original text? "The nearest police station, that's him."

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Schedule:

This session ended at 16:50

Description:

This discussion topic was suggested by ProZ.com member Edwin Miles:
How close does one have to stick to the original text? Is sentence level always appropriate, or is paragraph level enough? Can you leave out sentences entirely? How much leeway do/should you have? Is this decided in collaboration with the writer him/herself. etc.? The title above is a translation (by Ernst Kaiser/Eithne Wilkins) of "Er ist am nächsten daran," in Siegfried Lenz's "Deutschstunde" ("The German Lesson").

To help the flow of this chat and facilitate effective discussion please note the following format:
Questions will be posed as follows:
Q1. Where are located today?
Answers should use the following format:
A1. I am in Syracuse, NY USA

People who signed up for this focus group:

Alexandra Schneeuhr

قبرص

David Creuze

فرنسا

Bettina Myers

Last year I did a traineeship as a literary translator and translated two poems by the Ecuadorian poet Ramiro Oviedo. I managed to solve some translation problems about meaning and localization only in collaboration with him. How do you behave when you have to adjust a text from a culture to another?

Gabriele Monte

إيطاليا

Sandrine Guéant

فرنسا

Keen to see how others deal with these examples (and more).

الولايات المتحدة

ألمانيا

اليونان

I had lots of fights with my editor on this topic. ;)

Helene van der Westhuizen

ألمانيا

البرتغال

هولندا

إيران

الولايات المتحدة

Mariana S. Artieda Rico

الأرجنتين

How much leeway do you have in "improving a text," i.e. if you can express the idea in a more creative or interesting way than the author, is it alright to suggest it?

Arlene Lokomowitz

الولايات المتحدة

Brigitte Pellat (X)

فرنسا

Shobha Pawar

Huijiao Deng

إيطاليا

Really would like to share practice about he/she/it in translation practice Sp > Eng and Fr > Eng and general thoughts about literal versus more poetic translation.