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Literary translation vs polyglottery | ||
Tags: Polyglottery | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| nissimb Tetraglot Groupie India tenjikuyamato.blogsp Joined 6415 days ago 79 posts - 102 votes  Speaks: Marathi*, Hindi, English, Japanese Studies: Korean, Esperanto, Indonesian | Message 1 of 2 13 October 2007 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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Prof. Arguelles,
First of all I would like to thank you for the many wonderful and thoroughly informative posts that you have contributed to the forum. Just a brief introduction about myself, I am 30, from India and work as a Japanese-English technical translator and a part time Japanese language teacher at a university. My mother tongue is Marathi, and I have a working knowledge of Hindi. I have a masters degree in Japanese and have studied Japanese for three years at Japanese universities, so I have a good foundation in (modern) Japanese. Besides, I had two years of Korean (six hours a week) as an optional subject at the university, so I have elementary knowledge of Korean. Just like you, my primary interest in learning languages is for enjoying (and translating if possible) its literature. I have already translated some Japanese short stories into my mother tongue, Marathi. There are several things that I would like to request your opinion about, but since they are interrelated I thought of including them in the same thread. First, in your opinion, if someone aspires to achieve a proficiency in a language necessary for a literary translator and also aspires to be a polyglot (i.e. a polyglot literary translator), what would be the upper limit for the number of languages that the person can learn, and more importantly, maintain? Prof. Arguelles, I know this is a very subjective question with no clear answer, but still I would be extremely happy to know your views on this. The situation becomes further complex if the languages are mostly or entirely unrelated (Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, Swahili, Portuguese etc.). Is there a rule such as the "rule of seven (or three? four?)" for polyglot literary translators? Secondly, do you think it is humanly possible for a person who intends to translate literature, having no linguistic or cultural East Asian background, to master the big three languages in East Asia (Chinese, Korean, and Japanese)? I have read about literary translators who had mastered two of the three, but NEVER all three. Thank you very much, Nissim Edited by nissimb on 13 October 2007 at 3:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 2 21 October 2007 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
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As I understand the sense behind your first question, I concur that the fact of being a polyglot literary translator would necessarily entail mastering the languages in question to an unusually high degree. And the “rule of seven” to which you refer, that comes from Spivak’s Kak Stat Polygltom, does it not, in which he concludes that most honest polyglots, who may well and in a very meaningful sense know many more languages than this, will ultimately find that this is still the upper limit of the number of languages that they can really maintain and use actively at the same time. If this is true, then it should be no different for polyglot literary translators. As you rightly note, many of those linguistic entities so normally and so properly delineated as individual languages are really only variations on a common theme in the head of a polyglot, and so it would unquestionably be easier to acquire and maintain high competence in seven Romance or Indic languages than it would be in seven utterly unrelated languages. However, given a lifetime of scholarly dedication, I do not see why it should not be possible to “master” even a set as diverse as the one you propose. Furthermore, I do not believe the “rule of seven” represents any maximum capacity of the brain. Rather, it represents the fact that in order to really develop a profound relationship with a language requires an hour each day for the rest of one’s life, i.e., on top of and after the many thousands of hours required to learn a language well in the first place. Even most language obsessed people, even those lucky enough to turn their passion into their profession, have only a limited number of hours. The law of seven probably reflects what is left for language work, i.e., seven hours a day, after all other necessities and obligations have been tended to. Someone who managed eight hours could probably manage eight languages, etc., so the real limit one could actually know could conceivably push twenty, though not go much above that. In any case, for some real life examples, you might look to the biographies of translators as Sir John Bowring and Alexander Lenard.
I certainly do believe that it is humanly possible for a cultural and linguistic outsider to master Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Indeed, more than few 16th century Jesuits did this, and there may be more recent missionaries who have done so as well. However, it would unquestionably be both arduous and time-consuming – a lifetime’s work if ever there were one. Figure around fifteen years to “master” the first, seven for the second, and three for the third, that is twenty-five years right there, and then you would need more decades of practice. Still, if you conceived of the project in your youth and you can think long-term, you could succeed in achieving your goals in a respectable fashion by your old age. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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