2019-04-06-literal-translation.md 1.7 KB
layout: post title: "Literal translation and a video-book" date: 2019-04-06 11:30:25
categories: misc
I can hardly believe that it took me more than a year to go from a raw recording to a proper "video book": narrated (ultra) short story accompanied by related imagery. Now it is here (or, if you can't run zeronet, here's a proxy). But before you dive in, i want to write a few words about its english translation.
For a while now i've been an advocate of as direct, literal translation as possible (without totally compromising reading experience); especially so when translated version is perceived through subtitles and viewer can hear original sound (and by the way, i also strongly prefer subs to voice over/dub). There are two primary reasons for this.
First: every translation adds additional layer of distance to the original, creates a new work further apart from what author conceived. The more direct translation is, the more it is possible for a reader (especially those having some familiarity with source language) to get closer to original, even though some readers may get more distanced perception due to unnaturality of the language. But the literary translation does not give even a choice.
Second: watching videos with sub translation is a good way to improve language understanding, and the more direct translation is the easier it is to correlate original and translation.
And that's about all for this post. Now feel free to go watch what i've come up with.