{"id":884,"date":"2011-07-17T22:50:32","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T02:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/?p=884"},"modified":"2011-07-17T22:50:32","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T02:50:32","slug":"cest-la-bouquet-or-why-translation-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2011\/07\/17\/cest-la-bouquet-or-why-translation-is-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"C’est la bouquet, or why translation is hard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
\"Gregoire<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gr\u00e9goire Bouillier<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I used to use as my standard example of why translation is hard \u2014 and why fully automatic high-quality translation (FAHQT<\/a>) is unlikely in our lifetimes however old we are \u2014 the translation of the first word of the first sentence of the first book of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past<\/em>. The example isn’t mine. Brown et al.<\/a> cite a 1988 New\u00a0York Times article about the then-new translation by Richard Howard. Howard chose to translate the first word of the work,\u00a0longtemps<\/em>,\u00a0as\u00a0time and again<\/em>\u00a0(rather than, for example, the phrase for a long time<\/em>\u00a0as in the standard Moncrieff translation) so that the first word time<\/em> would\u00a0resonate with the temporal aspect of the last word of the last volume, temps<\/em>, some 3000 pages later. How’s that for context?<\/p>\n

I now have a new example, from the Lorin Stein<\/a> translation of Gr\u00e9goire Bouillier<\/a>‘s The Mystery Guest<\/a><\/em>. Stein adds a translator’s note to the front matter \u201cFor reasons the reader will understand, I have refrained from translating the expression \u2018C\u2019est le bouquet.\u2019 It means, more or less, \u2018That takes the cake.\u2019\u201d That phrase occurs on page 14 in the edition I’m reading<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fascinating thing is that the reader does<\/em> understand, fully and completely, why the translator chose this route. But the reason is, more or less, because of a sentence that occurs on page 83, a sentence that shares no words with the idiom in question. True the protagonist perseverates on this latter sentence for the rest of the novella, but still, I challenge anyone to give an explanation in less than totally abstract terms, as far from the words actually used as you can imagine, to explain the reasoning, perfectly clear to any reader, of why the translator made this crucial decision.<\/p>\n

Language is ineffable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gr\u00e9goire Bouillier I used to use as my standard example of why translation is hard \u2014 and why fully automatic high-quality translation (FAHQT) is unlikely in our lifetimes however old we are \u2014 the translation of the first word of the first sentence of the first book of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. The example […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6028,6027],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computational-linguistics","category-linguistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pLfN-eg","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2298,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2015\/08\/10\/binary-search-in-the-old-testament\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":0},"title":"Binary search in the Old Testament","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Monday, August 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (NIV Proverbs 16:33) \u2026\u201cLux et Veritas\u201d\u2026 Seal of Yale University image from Wikimedia Commons. The seal of Yale University shows a book with the Hebrew \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd (urim v\u2019thummim), a reference to the Urim and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "computer science"","block_context":{"text":"computer science","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/computer-science\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2290,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2015\/06\/26\/plain-meaning\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":1},"title":"Plain meaning","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Friday, June 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In its reporting on yesterday\u2019s Supreme Court ruling in King v. Burwell, Vox\u2019s Matthew Yglesias makes the important point that Justice Scalia\u2019s dissent is based on a profound misunderstanding of how language works. Justice Scalia would have it that \u201cwords no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "language"","block_context":{"text":"language","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/linguistics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2315,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2015\/09\/28\/whence-function-notation\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":2},"title":"Whence function notation?","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Monday, September 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I begin -- in continental style, unmotivated and, frankly, gratuitously -- by defining Ackerman's function \\(A\\) over two integers: \\[ A(m, n) = \\left\\{ \\begin{array}{l} n + 1 & \\mbox{ if $m=0$ } \\\\ A(m-1, 1) & \\mbox{ if $m > 0$ and $n = 0$ } \\\\ A(m-1, A(m,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "computer science"","block_context":{"text":"computer science","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/computer-science\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":842,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2011\/06\/04\/the-benefits-of-copyediting\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":3},"title":"The benefits of copyediting","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Saturday, June 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Dictionary and red pencil, photo by novii, on Flickr Sanford Thatcher has written a valuable, if anecdotal, analysis of some papers residing on Harvard\u2019s DASH repository (Copyediting\u2019s Role in an Open-Access World,\u00a0Against the Grain, volume 23, number 2, April 2011, pages 30-34), in an effort to get at the differences\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"dictionary and red pencil","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2454\/3559286242_a6decdc7d2_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2202,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2014\/09\/29\/inaccessible-writing-in-both-senses-of-the-term\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":4},"title":"Inaccessible writing, in both senses of the term","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Monday, September 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"My colleague Steven Pinker has a nice piece up at the Chronicle of Higher Education on \u201cWhy Academics Stink at Writing\u201d, accompanying the recent release of his new book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person\u2019s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, which I\u2019m awaiting my pre-ordered copy of.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "language"","block_context":{"text":"language","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/linguistics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1284,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/03\/30\/statement-before-the-house-science-committee\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":5},"title":"Statement before the House Science Committee","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Friday, March 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cMajesty of Law\u201d Statue in front of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., photo by flickr user NCinDC, used by permission (CC-by-nd) Here is my written testimony filed in association with my appearance yesterday at the\u00a0hearing on \"Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests\" before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":895,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}