Friday, February 3, 2012

What is the most accurate translation from French? English or Spanish?

I am trying to read some French poetry (I do not speak French) so I am trying to look for some experts opinion on which language is more accurate as a translation from French.. English or Spanish. I think it should be the latter considering the verbs conjugations but not sure. I would like something that confirms this. thanks!What is the most accurate translation from French? English or Spanish?
That depends first on the aim of the translation. That would normally be to produce an effect on the reader (or hearer) of the translation as close as possible to that on the original target audience, so it is a question of cultural and social differences as much as linguistic ones, and of course the nature of the original text will determine, at least partially, the width of the cultural gap to be bridged. France and Spain, for instance have much more in common in such spheres as law, administration, religion and intellectual tradition.

It depends secondly on the skill of the translator. For instance, Howard, Earl of Surrey, the first important English translator of Virgil invented English blank verse precisely because he thought (almost certainly correctly) that rhyme would be a terrible distortion of the nature of Virgilian rhythm. (To see what I mean, compare Howard's translation of the Second Book of the Aeneid with Dryden's rhymed version, but even then one has to take into account the difference in the sensibility of a mid 16th English reader of poetry with that of his late 17th century equivalent).

The choice of the target language comes only third in importance. I suppose that would be Proven莽al, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, in that order. But even German would probably be more sympathetic to a French original than English: many centuries of frontier bilingualism has brought these two languages much closer together in spirit than any patriotic Frenchman or German would ever admit.

A basic problem in translating French into any other language is its intellectual approach. French is excellent for conveying the basic hard meaning (one reason it has long been the language of diplomacy and international treaties) but it is very poor at conveying affective, subjective implications: try putting Russian "babushka" or Portuguese "avozinha," or even English "granny" or "granma" into French.

Why do you not search out some poems that have already been translated into both English and Spanish and compare the results? I am sure there must be some pieces by (e.g.) Ronsard, Victor Hugo, Lamartine or Verlaine, that have been translated into both.What is the most accurate translation from French? English or Spanish?
An indirect translation is always distortion. The earliest English versions of the great Russians were done indirectly from the French. This may still be true of Spanish versions (it saves the publishers money!).

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What is the most accurate translation from French? English or Spanish?
Being a Romance language, I'd have to say Spanish, it shares more with French than English does.

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