2 may 2003

Translation destroys logopeia. I hardly recognized Vallejo in a translation offered on Nick's blog: "This house pleases me perfectly." ("Esta casa me da entero bien.") The grammatical distortion, the colloquialism of this do not come through at all: two adverbs in place of a direct object! Only the meaning is the same! (No trivial matter).

Translation also creates a weird logopeia, in that the words are "dictated" by a foreign syntax and vocabulary. The most literal, awful sounding translations have the most logopeia: "This house gives me entire well." However, it is not the logopeia of the original: it is something "entire well." Does it have its source in the foreign language? Yes, but the effect is completely alien to that of the original text. We have the grammatical twist but not the colloquial impact.

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