Characteristics necessary to make a good literary translation
A good translation does not have a word-for-word translation. It should be created by understanding the context from the document or transferring the meaning of the text from the source to the target language, including linguistic appropriateness.
To make a literary translation correctly is necessary:
- Be faithful to the original text
The translation should preserve the original expression of the literature. It might be possible not to be able to convert the whole reading experience, but the essence of a text can be translated into other languages.
The translator must find words in his own language that express almost with the same fidelity the meaning of some words of the original language, for example, those related to cultural characteristics, cooking skills or abilities of that particular culture.
Fidelity of a translation to its original text means the quality of its accuracy or the degree of its closeness to the original text.
- The naturalness of expression
Naturalness is both grammatical and lexical, and is a touchstone at every level of a text, from paragraph to word, from title to punctuation.
Naturalness represents a real challenge for both novice and professional translators. It is evident that culture, language norms and the reader feedback to a translation are determinant features of naturalness for a translation.
- The linguistic extensions
The translation should preserve the original expression of the literature. It might be possible not to be able to convert the whole reading experience, but the essence of a text can be translated into other languages.
Sometimes to really get a natural text is necessary to add a linguistics extension in order to preserve the beauty of the text, its style, the lexical, grammatical and phonological features.
- The historical or cultural context
Literary translation requires translators to fundamentally understand the literary text, recognize the literary text, and be familiar with the creator’s life, life background, social form, national attributes, and social contradictions at that time, which can effectively understand the meaning of special sentences, symbolic sentences and new words appearing in the literary text.
Some examples of translated texts with all the required characteristics are the following:
Tránsito
Pero una triste oscuridad llegó tras ellos
– Friedrich Hölderlin
Yo era un niño y mi reino era el día.
El mundo me llegaba en relámpagos:
mi madre
susurrando y los pasos militares
de mi padre subiendo la escalera.
En mi cuarto cuidaba a un lobo y a un cordero
y un olor a alcanfor
subía hasta las tardes cuando se hacían humo.
Fueron hermosos días.
Riñas también, a veces, y puertas y ladridos.
Así y todo era un niño y en la mesa
alumbraba mi vaso de leche como un cirio.
De repente la noche cayó sobre mi frente
y fui un hombre descalzo en medio del camino.
Passage
[Those days were beautiful.] But how sad the dusk that followed. – Friedrich Hölderlin
I used to be a boy and my kingdom was day.
The world arrived to me in lighting bolts:
my mother
murmuring and the military footsteps
of my father going up the stairs.
In my room, I cared for a wolf and a lamb
and an odour of camphor
arose until the evenings became smoke.
Those were lovely days.
Rows as well, and doors, and barks.
Even so I was a boy and on the table
my glass of milk glowed like a candle.
Suddenly night fell across my brow
and there I was, a man, barefoot, mid-path.
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