Lost in Translation

For today’s TKT, I thought I’d talk about how sayings are translated from one language to another. The sayings that I’ll talk about are idiomatic expressions which have a more or less fixed form and whose meaning really cannot be ascertained by the words/grammar used to form them. For instance, “Cat got your tongue?” is an idiomatic expression whose meaning “Why are you so quiet?” really can’t be figured out just by looking at it. All languages have idioms and idiomatic expressions because they are a way of expressing complex thoughts in a simple, easily-recognized way. Saying “Cat got your tongue?” does far more than just express the words used because it both conveys the meaning “Why are you so quiet?” as well as gives the expression a level of informality because this is a colloquial utterance more likely to be said to a friend or family member than a person of authority. In literature, both prosaic and poetic, the use of “Cat got your tongue?” could also be used thematically in an extended metaphor (i.e. a metaphor where the same imagery or theme is used over a long period) about animals or cats or the like. All of these things together give idiomatic expressions their utility: meaning, register (level of formality or jargon), and theme. It’s exactly these three things that make translating idiomatic expressions so hard!

In two languages which share a vast amount of their background such as English and French, there are often a number of idiomatic expressions that overlap and can be translated almost word for word once grammar is taken into consideration. An example of this would be “Time is money” which can be translated into French as “Le temps, c’est de l’argent” (literally: “Time, it is of money”). Here, the meaning is the same, the register is pretty much the same (both are neutral, neither belonging to erudite or informal language), and they have the same themes. Sometimes just a word is changed here or there. For example, in English we have “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” but the French have “Paris ne s’est pas fait en un jour” (literally: “Paris was not made in a day”). They use a city which is more important to them, is all. The meaning, register and theme are still pretty much all the same.

So what happens when one of the three change? Well, you can’t change the meaning of an idiomatic expression and expect it to be considered a translation. Generally, when it comes to translations, it’s the register or theme which is sacrificed first; the meaning must stay or else what’s the point of translating? If I say “I want peas” but translate it as “Il pue la merde” (literally: “He stinks like shit”), then I’m not getting the meaning across, am I? The meaning, therefore, must stay the same or be as close as possible.

The register is generally considered the next important thing, since if something is being said formally in the original language, it should stay formal in the target language. Sometimes this is difficult to do because the original language may use more formal language in certain situations whereas the target language may use more informal language. A good example of this is the difference in the way Americans and the French speak with professors. In the US, students often switch from formal to informal with their professors quickly. Sometimes students here are very informal with their professors. An example of this would be me and my former professor, Dr. Macheak. I think I went from calling Dr. Macheak down to just “Macheak” within a few months, and not too long after that, it just became “Tony.” Very informal. This type of situation is not likely to occur in France at all where students remain formal with their professors. An interaction between student and professor there and student and professor here are very different, and so either the register shifts with the translation or else the register is kept in order to show the difference between the US and France.

Here is where style comes into play, and it affects idiomatic expressions as well because there is often more than one way to say the same thing. “It’s raining cats and dogs” means the same thing as “It’s piss-pouring,” but the second is far more informal if not considered vulgar. The same goes for similar expressions in French; “Il pleut des cordes (or des seaux)” (literally: It’s raining ropes (or buckets)”) can also be expressed as “Il pleut comme vache qui pisse” (literally: “It’s raining like a cow pissing”). Here, since the meaning is more or less the same in all of these expressions, it comes down to a choice in register and style.

The theme is what gets shafted most often when it comes to translations. After all, if the meaning is there and if you can get the register in there as well (a bonus), then who cares if it’s Rome or Paris that got built in a day? Here, prose and poetry are really the only major victims of ill-translated themes. Poetry suffers worse, however, because it thrives on extended metaphors and thematic imagery. I myself have played with the thematic translation of poetry from French to English in this poem about Spring using the imagery of dogs, and it’s difficult, believe me. Not only do you have to consider the meaning and register of the poem, but also the meter, line length, and sounds (where applicable) in addition to trying to keep a theme going. Poetry is language in its highest and most concentrated form, and translating pure, concentrated language is damn near impossible! Idiomatic expressions abound in poetry where the themes tie the poem together into a single thought, a single picture. Change the theme of an idiomatic expression in a poem, and you’ve got a world of hurt coming on since that now alters meaning and significance, the first thing you’re not supposed to change when translating.

See why genuine translators are few and far between? Not just any schmoe can translate; it takes lots of knowledge of both the mechanics as well as the use of both target and original languages to get a translation anywhere near close in meaning, register and theme. An extensive knowledge of idiomatic expressions makes the translations more smooth, more accurate and concise. After all, I could just explain to you that “Call a spade a spade” means to describe something exactly as it really is as opposed to using euphamisms or unclear descriptors, but that takes far longer in both languages to be of any use, especially if I absolutely need to be concise like in advertisements. Remember, I said that idiomatic expressions are great because they are a way of expressing complex thoughts in a simple, fixed way that just about everyone recognizes quickly. If we didn’t use idiomatic expressions like “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” or “One in the hand” or the like, we’d spend forever explaining the exact same concepts over and over when a simple phrase covers all the bases. Idiomatic expressions are great; there’s just often a lot lost in translation.

And so now that I’ve rambled far longer than originally planned, I’ll leave you with one of the matching games I put up on the door of my office this week. This matching game is where the English saying has something to do with cats but the French one doesn’t. This is a good way of showing that if an English-speaking author decided to use lots of sayings about cats to create a theme, that his/her work would not be the same if it were translated into French. Either the theme would be lost or the idioms would be. So match the numbered French sayings with the lettered English sayings. You can post your answers in the comments or hold onto them for tomorrow when I’ll put the answers up. Have fun!