See, when I thought of this post, I thought I'd be finding humor in a terrible translation of The Stranger. What I found was a surprisingly, disappointingly normal first couple of pages. A few pronouns are off, but I found no big errors, except for "Bière," which can translate to "coffin" or "beer." So they kept vigil over Maman's beer. Thanks, Meursault. I suppose the straightforward language of Camus lends itself better to Google's simplistic translations.
My pitiful little translation can be found here.
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For a little more funny and less literary kick, here's the first paragraph put through a Bad Translator...
"Today, my mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I do not know. I received a telegram from the refugee hospital: "My mother died.We are buried tomorrow.Try feeling.It does not mean anything.It may be yesterday."
I love it! At first when I saw the post, for some reason, even having read the title and seen Google Translate, I thought you had gone through and translated it yourself. And then immediately I was like, wait a second, Betsy speaks French? It was utterly baffling.
ReplyDeleteI think the "bad" translation is actually pretty perfect when you consider the circumstances in the later half of the novel. "Try feeling. It does not mean anything." It's like the people at the home are telling him to try feeling; like they know in advance that if he does not show emotion at this funeral it will go badly for him. And then "it does not mean anything" is almost better, as it implies that Meursault does not care that his mother died. If these were the words in the book, I think our class would have probably agreed more with the prosecutor!
Haha this post is great! This is one of the things that i've thought about doing but never actually got to it but thank you. It's funny how we always tend to bash google translate about not being accurate but in reality it is not too bad. I do think that the translation looses Camus literary style but overall not bad. Maybe i should start using it on my french home work jkjk
ReplyDeleteAh this is so cool! It seems even more emotionless and flat in French, which reminds me that the words we read were not the ones Camus wrote. It's sad that some of the original tone of the author is lost through translation. I appreciate your efforts to recover the original words for us!
ReplyDeleteThis is such a cool post! I like how the french version which is the original, seems to capture more of the Meursault essence. It seems a lot more dull, nonchalant, and apathetic. It's interesting how translation can change the way a character is portrayed!
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