But one of the bonuses is that the first book will be around ninety thousand words, which is right around the word count for debut authors in fantasy. The following books would probably skew a little longer, but not by much.
This decision makes me really confident in my writing. My first goal will be to go through the draft and ensure that there aren't any plot holes or unwritten scenes. It will only be on subsequent read throughs that I will tackle the smaller stuff like making the prose smooth and working on believability in my dialogue.
On an interesting side not, I like that I'm expecting this to be a trilogy, since I usually dislike them. There have been some amazing standout trilogies like the Mistborn trilogy and the Infernal Devices that I love beyond belief but for the most part I don't enjoy them as much as series. Now that I'm writing it though, I do feel more inclined to read them.
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There are many beloved books that have been translated from other languages to English. But has it lost some of its meaning through the translation? There are limitations to every language in terms of expression, so perhaps when going between these translations, there are certain things that weren’t applied. It also depends entirely on the translator and the grasp they have of both languages. They need to fully understand the original language, and not only copy the story in the new language, but also the tone and the voice of the previous author.
Many classics have had to
be translated. There is the Illiad from Greek, the Journey to the Centre of theEarth from French, or the One Hundred Years of Solitude from Spanish. Depending
on who was responsible for translating them could severely influence the
reader.
When I was deciding which
translation of the Illiad I wanted to read, I stumbled across people debating
whether it was better to read the clearer version that is more similar to our
style of writing, or the one that is harder to understand, yet is truer to the
original work. I ended up choosing Robert Fagles because he seemed to be a
mixture of both. But I don’t know if there were clever things that Homer did
with his writing that I won’t be able to experience because I will never learn
Greek to find out for myself.
Poems can’t be
translated. The Illiad is an epic poem so there are definitely elements that are
lost. Poets manipulate forms and word variety to delve deeper into their subject.
Oftentimes the meaning of their words are only the surface to what they really
want the reader to understand. This is done with literary devices or form. Nothing is done in a poem without a certain intention my the writer.
In my opinion, you can never translate a poem without having to tear it apart and reconstruct it from the ground up. At which point we can never truly say that it was the original poet’s anymore since it is so radically different.
In my opinion, you can never translate a poem without having to tear it apart and reconstruct it from the ground up. At which point we can never truly say that it was the original poet’s anymore since it is so radically different.
Another interesting case
is Beowulf, an epic poem that is cited as the oldest English poem to date. No
one knows who created this story, or exactly when it was created because it was
told orally for countless years. It was later written down by Christian monks who added a lot of
biblical allusions in the hopes of encouraging the Anglo-Saxons to follow
Christianity. Therefore, when you read the story, there will be reference to
Hell and Heaven even though there was none of that in its original form.
But the reason I want to
bring this up, is can we judge a book if it is not written in our
language? At that point we can only judge the overall story because that is all
the author has created. The writing style itself is at the discretion of the
translator. Reading a book that was originally written in another language is
the same as looking through an opaque window because we can see the general
intention of the original author, but all the little details are controlled by the
translator.
It is also necessary to
have these translations because without those, stories would not be able to
reach the world wide proportions that they do. We can’t learn a new language
every time we want to read a book from a different part of the world. There are
people that do this, but only because they already know the story in its
translated language and they love it so much they want to read the original.
Basically my conclusion is that when we read translated works we have to keep in mind that it has lost some of the care and detail that the author included. Especially with older material, there are going to be changes. Now, an interesting idea would be whether there has ever been an instance where the translator made a book better by having nicer prose or smoother dialogue.
Basically my conclusion is that when we read translated works we have to keep in mind that it has lost some of the care and detail that the author included. Especially with older material, there are going to be changes. Now, an interesting idea would be whether there has ever been an instance where the translator made a book better by having nicer prose or smoother dialogue.
Here are some links if
you would like to keep reading on this subject:
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