Wednesday, March 5, 2008

On Translation

Usefully, from a classfellow, on a:
....translation Hayyim Nahman Bialik and it goes like this: "....reading a work of art in translation is like kissingsomebody through a handkerchief." To which I heard Welsh poet Menna Elfyn adding: "....but it's better than not kissing at all."
We'll be looking (briefly, but helpfully) at Quine's Gavagai thought-experiment on the indeterminacy of translation in seminar this week.

2 comments:

J-bomb said...

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Great amusement can be had by typing something in English, translating it into a random language and then translating it back again. It really brings home and demonstrates the problem of translation and the theory around it.

Dr. Stephen Ogden said...

That's non-lateral thinking!
I'm tempted to link to a Engrish webpage ;--)