As someone who can only read English, am I missing out? Are there people tweeting bangers, publishing great books, or writing a killer blog in a language I can’t understand? Am I losing out on writing I’d enjoy because I can’t read Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, or any of the other thousands of languages I don’t know?
I thought about this for a while and came up with an answer: functionally not. Anyone who wants many people to read their writing online probably writes in the lingua franca of the internet, English. The market for good writing online is efficient but endlessly deep. This means the time I must spend to find a great writer in another language is probably the same as it is in English.
Nearly everything I want to read is either in English or translated into English. Translation technology made it more accessible than ever before. This also means we increasingly take translation for granted. This is a shame because translation influences you more than you realize.
Translation matters: Iliad edition
I had a realization recently when reading the Iliad for the second time: translations matter. My first read-through was a translation by Robert Fagles. He tries to stay close to a literal translation of the ancient Greek and has a wordier style. This means many unfamiliar words and phrases which made it overall difficult for me to follow.
My second read was with the Robert Fitzgerald translation. I had a completely different experience and enjoyed it immensely. Of course, familiarity with the work can account for a part of this, but when I compared side by side, I noticed significant differences. Fitzgerald is more poetic and sparing in his translation, which made it more readable for me.
I thought it was a pity two of the most “popular” versions of the Iliad (Fagles and Lattimore) sacrificed readability for accuracy. There are many who, because of a translation, are having a worse time with the Iliad, not enjoying it, and missing out.
Ultimately, this inspired a recent project of mine: Iliad Translations. It is a site dedicated to detailing and comparing translations of the Iliad to help people find the best ones for them.
History is what someone decided to translate
Beyond individual texts, when we look at the course of history, what we read is what survives. What survives is what was copied. Many languages died, and we lost many texts. The Iliad was one of eight epic poems related to the Trojan War. The only other one to survive is the Odyssey.
In the words of Amused Chimp, “if the news is fake, imagine history.” Does it surprise you there are many old “books” without a surviving original manuscript? For many, the oldest manuscript is from thousands of years after the original. For example, the oldest copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is from the 14th century (1100+ years after he died).
We base much of our knowledge of the past on what now unknown people decided to translate. Every translation changes the original meaning, even if they don’t intend to. Cultural or religious influences also cause more intentional impacts. Most people think about old books staying the same over time, but that is simply not true.
Language itself is lossy. We lose information in the process of translating ideas into language. I’m sure some of history’s best thinkers didn’t write well enough for their thoughts to survive. Others were lost to a lack of or bad translations. Translation adds to lossiness by moving beyond the original author’s ideas.
Why translation interests me is that it is a massive leverage point on history. Translation shapes the experience of everyone who reads a text. Over centuries, this shapes massive portions of culture.
Think harder about your translations
What can you do about this? If you can’t read the original, remember you are reading a translation. Look into the history of the translation and do some analysis of it. Can you trust this is the original text? Does that matter?
We think a lot about the reputation of the book and the author, but we don’t think about the reputation of the translator. Translators deserve more analysis than they currently get. What is their analysis of the text? Do other experts agree? What were the cultural pressures of the time they were translating?
Realize translations can suck. You might find a different translation is more accurate or readable. If multiple translations are available, try comparing them (if you’re reading the Iliad, you’re in luck). It might not be your fault you can’t understand what you are reading, it might be the translator’s.
Lastly, translations matter and you should care about them, but remember reality is always on top.
Books lie, he said.
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
God dont lie.
No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.
He held up a chunk of rock.
He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.
More random facts about translations
- Portions of the Bible are translated into 3,589 languages. Portions of the Bible were translated 3589 times in 2022 (including 724 full translations).
- Xi Jinping is a massive fan of Goethe and knows Faust by heart. It is likely he funded and supported the complete translation of Goethe into Chinese (totalling 40-50 volumes).
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu has multiple passages where it is unclear if the passage should apply to yourself or the enemy. Different translations have different interpretations which completely change the text (credit to Finn).
- Dante’s Divine Comedy has a rhyming scheme in Italian that is lost (or extremely forced) in English.
- In a test of multi-language audio, YouTube found 15% of watch time came from viewers who were watching the video in a different language from the original recording.
- The oldest machine translator was built in 1933.
- Tyler Cowen has many excellent podcast episodes touching on translation. Two of my favourites are David Bentley Hart and Vaughn Smith.
Let me know what you think on Twitter.
Ian Vanagas 