Stjepan’s answer to “How difficult is it to find a quality translator for your work?” > Likes and Comments
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My first book Godeena was translated a teacher of English, but in the end, I had to correct the translation. In many places in translation anyway I was not satisfied and I had to rearrange. It is possible that the translation loses the essence of what I have written and that it does not happen writer would have to be in contact with the translator in order not to lose the sense of what the writer wrote and thought. There are excellent translators who translate from English to Croatian and from Croatian to English. However a couple of times I was in touch with readers who have read the book in English and are not at all satisfied that it was translated into Croatian. I'm trying to translate what I write as best I can but unfortunately, my English is not at the top level and that is why I need the help of a proofreader who is a native English speaker.
Translating is authoring and a translator has copyright over his translation as much as the original author. A translator cannot do a good job if the translation he is producing is not page after page constantly discussed with the original author. That does not happen all the time. Stephen King is mostly averagely translated into French. Anne Rice is mostly beautifully translated into French. My experience is that this collaboration is possible if the translator is a co-author of the translation, which means he gets 50% of the royalties. But that goes against the grain of authors who want it done entirely by the translator and it better has to be good, and the authors gives at best 10% of the royalties if any.. Or by the translator who may think he knows better, and in some cases he does. But a translation always loses something "in translation" because no two languages are alike and I will even say no two speakers of the same language produce the same discourse. We all know the difference in meaning between the USA and the UK as for simple words like biscuit or solicitor. Try to translate the following sentence. One person speaking to a heavily smoking gay pimp: "you could avoid dropping your fags everywhere in the street." without more context you cannot know if we are speaking of cigarette butts or of gay prostitutes. And try to translate this Shakespearian title and keep the rhythm and the sound architecture: "Love's Labours Lost." I translated in 2005 in Sri Lanka some of the Sigiri Graffiti from old Sinhala into French and English. You can produce something beautiful of its own but it cannot be the same beauty. I often write reviews of films or books in Englilsh and in French. Even if the starting point is the same, the logic of the languages brings a complete way of arguing the points you want to put forward. Each language imposes its own logic at several levels: phonetics, semantics, syntax but also paradigmatic networks of connections between any word with a whole set of words, and such networks are absolutely personal. Have a good day.
Sometimes it is really difficult to translate some sentences from Croatian into English, I try to make them as good as possible. I can’t consider myself a top translator because I’m not, but I want what I’ve written to look as good as possible in English.
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My first book Godeena was translated a teacher of English, but in the end, I had to correct the translation. In many places in translation anyway I was not satisfied and I had to rearrange. It is possible that the translation loses the essence of what I have written and that it does not happen writer would have to be in contact with the translator in order not to lose the sense of what the writer wrote and thought. There are excellent translators who translate from English to Croatian and from Croatian to English. However a couple of times I was in touch with readers who have read the book in English and are not at all satisfied that it was translated into Croatian. I'm trying to translate what I write as best I can but unfortunately, my English is not at the top level and that is why I need the help of a proofreader who is a native English speaker.
Translating is authoring and a translator has copyright over his translation as much as the original author. A translator cannot do a good job if the translation he is producing is not page after page constantly discussed with the original author. That does not happen all the time. Stephen King is mostly averagely translated into French. Anne Rice is mostly beautifully translated into French. My experience is that this collaboration is possible if the translator is a co-author of the translation, which means he gets 50% of the royalties. But that goes against the grain of authors who want it done entirely by the translator and it better has to be good, and the authors gives at best 10% of the royalties if any.. Or by the translator who may think he knows better, and in some cases he does. But a translation always loses something "in translation" because no two languages are alike and I will even say no two speakers of the same language produce the same discourse. We all know the difference in meaning between the USA and the UK as for simple words like biscuit or solicitor. Try to translate the following sentence. One person speaking to a heavily smoking gay pimp: "you could avoid dropping your fags everywhere in the street." without more context you cannot know if we are speaking of cigarette butts or of gay prostitutes. And try to translate this Shakespearian title and keep the rhythm and the sound architecture: "Love's Labours Lost." I translated in 2005 in Sri Lanka some of the Sigiri Graffiti from old Sinhala into French and English. You can produce something beautiful of its own but it cannot be the same beauty. I often write reviews of films or books in Englilsh and in French. Even if the starting point is the same, the logic of the languages brings a complete way of arguing the points you want to put forward. Each language imposes its own logic at several levels: phonetics, semantics, syntax but also paradigmatic networks of connections between any word with a whole set of words, and such networks are absolutely personal. Have a good day.
Sometimes it is really difficult to translate some sentences from Croatian into English, I try to make them as good as possible. I can’t consider myself a top translator because I’m not, but I want what I’ve written to look as good as possible in English.
Igor