Lost in Translation: A World of Knowledge and Beliefs

Guest Writer // Allegra Gonzalez

Literature has been part of my life ever since I realized Roald Dahl’s characters were far more interesting than my human friends. Growing up, I was always taught English was the language of the bourgeois, resulting in my understanding that Standard English Literature was fundamental and superior to all. Consequently, I sought to solely indulge myself in American literature, authors, and even the repetitive tropes western publishers keep reusing. As a native Spanish speaker, I am disconcerted to look back and admit I have never read a book cover to cover in my native language. Becoming aware of this makes me feel like I have alienated myself from my first language, and further, its culture and all the wondrous literature it yields. Acknowledging that for the past eighteen years of my life I have read solely English literature, I have come to realize there is a whole literary world beyond the English language and realm. I felt like Aladdin’s song, “A Whole New World” started playing in the back of my mind. A global universe of languages, cultures, beliefs, ideologies, tropes, characters, drama—the list goes on! Yet, why are translated books so rare in the English language and culture? 

It wasn’t until I picked up a Korean translated to English book, Dallergut’s Dream Department Store (familiar to many due to its eye-catching cover) that I realized how much a translation can butcher a book. The book was a bestseller in Korea, but I had trouble finishing the 200-page, large-font work. I felt it was written using the vocabulary of a ten-year-old. The adjectives and verbs used were simple, the sentences were made up of solely independent clauses, and overall, it read like a robot, lacking the depth it was known for in Korea.  Of course, this vocabulary butchered the plot as a whole. This book was a phenomenon in Korea, yet it was unbearable to read in English. Once I dragged myself through the last few chapters, I reflected on what I had just read. I came to understand that this unpleasant experience highlighted a situation I had never considered before: how much of the literary world is left in the dark because of translation issues and bias? 

It’s no easy feat to translate a text from one language to the other. Being a translator is quite the task. It might be simple to think translation just means finding the equivalent word from language to language, but it encompasses so much more. First and foremost, the translator needs to be fully fluent in both languages—just that alone is hard. Second, the interpreter must be passionate and have a thorough understanding of the work, its plot, idea, message, and many more variables that come into play whilst analyzing a text. Third, the translator must hold pre-existing knowledge and surrounding information regarding the book, author, culture, and overall key foundations that might influence how and why the text was written. There are lots of words in different languages that quite literally do not have an English equivalent. An example would be the Spanish word sobremesa, this term is used to describe the pleasant and relaxing moments that are gathered around the dinner table once everyone finishes eating. This word describes amusing instances where individuals engage through conversing and connection. A contrasting example would be the word introduce, which means, “to bring (something, especially a product, measure, or concept) into use or operation for the first time” (Oxford Dictionary). In Spanish, it’s direct translation would be insert, which means a completely different thing. You would use this word in Spanish to ‘insert a key in a lock’, rather than its congruent translation presentar.

Words hold a lot of power and varying meanings in every language, therefore it is quite difficult to condense what an author is trying to say and summarize it in a different language by a different author. During the translation process, meanings and implications can be damaged with unintentional biases and interpretation. Take French poet Baudelaire, whose poems in French are almost completely different poems in English. The famous poem “The Albatross” has more than a dozen translations in English, each contrasting the other. 

Another example would be to transcribe religious texts.  Certain words used in religions carry a cultural nuance that cannot be directly copy-pasted into a different language. Religion holds strong philosophical and spiritual ideologies that are severely difficult to interpret in a whole new language by translators. Apart from the sticky process of translating a book, it being a success in a foreign country is another scheme on its own. 

The Western world has been a high achiever in literature throughout history. When thinking about English Literature, great authors come to mind: Jane Austen, Shakespeare, George Orwell, or Virginia Woolf. More recent authors include Sarah J. Maas, Stephen King, or Colleen Hoover, whose novel It Ends With Us, has been translated to over forty-three languages. Yet, Russia is also renowned, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, and so is Japan, where the world-famous poetic form, Haiku, originates from. So why are Americans against engaging in global literature? “Only about 3% of all books published in the United States are works in translation…And that 3% figure includes all books in translation—in terms of literary fiction and poetry, the number is actually closer to 0.7%… Only a fraction of the titles that do make their way into English are covered by the mainstream media. So despite the quality of these books, most translations go virtually unnoticed and never find their audience” (University of Rochester 1). It is unmistakable that certain cultures, countries, and languages have a disadvantage whilst spreading their literature and ideologies. Many Western world countries are abstinent in reading and emerging themselves in foreign literature, that is to say foreign cultures. Texts become isolated in their own discourses, rather than transmitting certain views and ideals globally. The spread of the latter would expose Westerners to a more cultured and open-minded perspective, reversing the ethnocentric mindset Americans and many Western cultures have held for hundreds of years, dating back to colonization. 

The lack of translated work in foreign countries contributes to two main issues: the challenging process of successfully translating written works, and  finding a relevant audience in a completely different country with its own discourse. It is especially challenging when the target country holds its own ethnocentric beliefs and philosophies. This is not to say that English and Western literature is not extraordinary, it has quite literally shaped and changed history through its outstanding authors and literary movements. Yet it is guilty for filtering and holding a superiority complex above foreign literature and not giving an entryway or an inviting approach to global literary works that could bring enlightenment and wisdom from all over. 

Sources

“About.” University of Rochester Three Percent, 

www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/about/. Accessed 01 Oct. 2024.

Linguistic Difficulties of Translating Religious Texts Into …, 

www.ijcar.net/assets/pdf/Vol7-No10-October2020/4.-Linguistic-Difficulties-of-Tra nslating-Religious-Texts-into-English.pdf. Accessed 01 Oct. 2024. 

Morris, Bill. “Why Americans Don’t Read Foreign Fiction.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 12 July 2017, 

www.thedailybeast.com/why-americans-dont-read-foreign-fiction. Accessed 01 Oct. 2024.