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Language and imagery | ||
Tags: Linguistics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6316 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 1 of 4 05 March 2008 at 2:19am | IP Logged |
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This is perhaps a vague alteration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but nevertheless: Depending on the language you read in, do you believe that necessarily effects the way you create mental images of those particular characters and scenes? I was fantasizing the other day about not reading any translations of Tolstoy until I start Russian and get it good enough to read his novels first time in the original (this will probably never happen...). I wss also wondering whether having read a translation would alter the mental images I would get from that book even if I shifted into reading the original later on.
I imagine it possibly would, as certain words may conjure up different images and feelings (coordinate bilingualism). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 4 05 March 2008 at 4:17am | IP Logged |
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My personal response is an unqualified 'yes', to both questions.
Reading the same book in multiple languages -does- build up subtly different mental images, even with very good translations (rather than the all-too-common butchery which is sometimes called translation). There are just too many different nuances between nearest-to-equivalent words and phrases, even in similar languages. Reading a book the first time is never the same as re-reading it, and the first read does influence your perceptions of it. If I had the choice between never reading Tolstoy, and reading Tolstoy in translation, though, I'd pick the latter. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rob Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6165 days ago 287 posts - 288 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 3 of 4 05 March 2008 at 4:22am | IP Logged |
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I would say if you can find the will-power to not read Tolstoy in any language other than Russian, then it would probably be a lot more rewarding when you finally get to it. If you read a translation, even one where the translator wanted to stay as faithful to the original as possible, it's still not exactly the same. I wouldn't imagine it would be vastly different. However, if you get stuck on a certain word, and you have an English copy, it's tempting to accept the English translation as the definitive answer, which of course, given subtext, it may not be. Either way, great books are open to interpretation, so better to make it your own than someone else's, if you're so inclined.
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| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6461 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 4 of 4 05 March 2008 at 10:38am | IP Logged |
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I've had these same thought myself, but with French instead of Russian.
For instance, Balzac is one of my favorite French authors and there is many of his books I only want to read in original French, because I want all my perceptions of them to be based on my first reading of them in French. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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