On Tuesday, June 30, 1998 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-7, Hildegard Sutter wrote:
In Article #30617, Luciano D. said:
TRADUTTORE TRADITORE
it's definitely Italian. It means that when you translate
anything you cannot but "betray" (tradire) the original meaning.
In other worlds: "literal translation does not exist".
That's interesting. I always thought it means that the
translator may have to betray either the source or the
target. And the phrase usually comes up in connection
with the old question: Should the translator be faithful
to the source or the target?
Still, can anyone think of the origin of the phrase?
I believe someone quite famous in translation theory first
said it, but I can't remember who it was.
hs
I'm surprised that the WP entry doesn't even give
the origin of the phrase. HH
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untranslatability
Similarly, consider the Italian adage "traduttore, traditore": a literal translation is "translator, traitor". The pun is lost, though the meaning persists. (A similar solution can be given, however, in Hungarian, by saying a fordítás: ferdítés, which
roughly translates as "translation is distortion".)
That being said, many of the translation procedures discussed here can be used in these cases. For example, the translator can compensate for an "untranslatable" pun in one part of a text by adding a new pun in another part of the translated text.
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