Seems to be the sort of thing that will trigger backlash.

Good grief.

Translations of literary works, poetry especially, are a very complex endeavor. Should one aim at literal meaning, or sacrifice that in the interests of trying to recreate something of the phonetic melody of the original? Alliteration, half or whole rhymes, and/or focus on rendering a similar syllabification (think Haiku).

To insist that a translator with sufficient mastery of the two languages involved, also belong to a particular ethnic group, political persuasion, gender or age strikes me as the height of stupidity. The language skills and command of nuance, are paramount.

Recently, I helped a close friend (Chinese) in her quandaries about translating that same poem into Mandarin Chinese. I don't know any Chinese, so my comments were restricted to observations about the grammar and apparent intent of the poet (my friend was very puzzled about these same issues, especially a few lines.)

Should my friend's Mandarin translation be discounted because she didn't meet the same criteria required of the English-Catalan translator (CATALAN??)?

To me, the most interesting thing about this story is that the NYT decided it was important enough to publish. It's a perfect illustration of why I don't subscribe to the NYT and never click on their stuff.

Cancel culture at work, I suppose.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
To me, the most interesting thing about this story is that the NYT decided it was important enough to publish. It's a perfect illustration of why I don't subscribe to the NYT and never click on their stuff.

Cancel culture at work, I suppose.

But Steve, the article linked was from the Washington Post. Was there a typo in your comment?

Also, I’m curious, what is your preferred newspaper? I usually read the NYT and only sometimes read the WaPo.

I don’t think there’s a perfect news source but the NYT seems better than a lot of options. Re WaPo, I don’t know why, but I don’t really like the WaPo (like, for layout/aesthetic reasons) so I don’t read them enough to have much of an opinion about them.