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WAR And PEACE
TheFuriousWombat:
--- Quote from: Hat on 06 Apr 2009, 08:27 ---
--- Quote from: TheFuriousWombat on 04 Apr 2009, 16:22 ---I think the whole "oh man, how can you read that book in translation?? The original is so much better!" is as tiring an argument as the whole book to film adaptation one.
--- End quote ---
An interpretation is not an adaptation they are two completely different things, and since this is kind of the idea that your whole argument relies upon you are completely and objectively wrong about this, sorry you had to hear that from me.
--- End quote ---
I actually wasn't comparing the two forms at all. I was comparing the arguments against them, both of which are often made purely based upon some form of nostalgia or fanboyish devotion or general unwillingness to give the other side a fair chance. Obviously films adapted from books and novels in translation are not the same at all and obviously the process of creation is totally different. People who insist that "the book was SO much better" or "the original language version is SO much better" often do so in the same annoying way, however, and rarely articulate a good argument to support their point.
Beren:
Please never read a book over one hundred years old. You can't understand it, you're just not steeped in that culture.
Yeah, I'm being facetious, but it's far more true than most people realize. For something like Dante, for instance, even if you're reading it in the original language, you're still missing a lot.
Frankly, for a lot of the people reading War and Peace, or Crime and Punishment or the like, even in Russian, they're going to need footnotes to be able to get the full depth of a lot of what's happening.
Beren:
--- Quote from: beren ---I'm being facetious,
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It's just valid (or in-valid) as the never read a translation remark.
SonofZ3:
--- Quote from: Beren on 06 Apr 2009, 18:10 ---Please never read a book over one hundred years old. You can't understand it, you're just not steeped in that culture.
Yeah, I'm being facetious, but it's far more true than most people realize. For something like Dante, for instance, even if you're reading it in the original language, you're still missing a lot.
Frankly, for a lot of the people reading War and Peace, or Crime and Punishment or the like, even in Russian, they're going to need footnotes to be able to get the full depth of a lot of what's happening.
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I completely disagree. You may miss out on some of the reasoning behind remarks being made, or why some social situation happens to be very uncomfortable for an individual or what have you, but when we're talking about War and Peace, we're talking about an author who does an amazing job of portraying the conflict and feelings of human beings in all sorts of situation, the dichotomy of human existence. Which is the same now as it was 100 years ago, because we're still human beings. The novel hasn't had such staying power for no reason. People identify with the struggles of the characters, because humans are humans, 100 years ago or now.
TheFuriousWombat:
...and so it doesn't matter if you're reading it in the original Russian or in translation. The themes and characters and ideas are universal and often transcend a specific historical era and certainly a specific geographic location. Beren is right though in a sense. Even Russian versions of the great Russian authors include footnotes just as any version of Dickens you might find in English would have plenty of footnotes. That's because the book is an artifact of a specific historical time and so much that actually happens and is referred to will in fact be lost on a modern reader no matter what language they read it in. If the translator conveys the major stuff, the themes and so on (and the good ones most certainly do), everyone is missing immediate familiarity with the minutiae of historical context, a point nullified by good footnotes, and yes, readers in the non-original language are "missing" the subtleties of the original language in many ways. Nonetheless, all of this supports what I originally said, I think, which is no matter what language you're reading something in, if it's great, it will be great in the hands of a skilled translator. Lost subtlety aside, War and Peace is a masterpiece in English just as it is in Russian and arguing that the latter is inherently better is, I think, missing the point.
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