Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Beum]

Good morning , good afternoon and good evening everybody in the world.
I'm Sutee and I'm Thai people.
Today I would like to talk about my feeling to literary works.
Two years ago I readed Thai literary works .
I know Thai literary works from my friend. His name is Boyd .
Beginning I don't like it a little bit because normally I don't like reading but when I readed it I enjoyable .
My favorites Thai literary works are short story and experimental story .
And My favorites artists are 'Rong Vongsawan , Vin lurevarin and Prapda Yuon.
I like them because they have very creative thinking.
Now I 'm sorry if you are not Thai people.
But even so I think you have readed literary works of your language.
If you have readed literary works .
How do you think about it ?
Personally I think about literary works have a charm in itself of each language.
Do you think like me ?

[pugachevV]

I agree with you. Every written language has it's own literature. If that literature is translated into another language it will be enjoyed by many people who can then understand it. Many books are published in several languages (like the "Harry Potter" stories) and are enjoyed all over the world.
People around the world are really not that different and we all love a good story.

[Guest]

Reading literature in its original language is optimal, but translations are wonderful. Where would we be without "War and Peace" or "Bridgette Jones's Diary"?

[Ayaba]

I am a native Spanish speaker, who have read many books by many English authors. After confronting several translations with the original in English I found many (too many) quite disappointing, even debasing to its authors. The very best are done in Spain; sometimes better than the original�even some English authors have acknowledged that curiosity. But the ones pitifully undertaken in places like Argentina and Venezuela are really awful. This may be so by the cultural degeneracy of Latin America in contrast with mature Spain. Also many translations are attempted by the Latino graduates of USA colleges who have a thoroughly degraded knowledge of Spanish culture and Spanish language. I found astonishing the current trend for Anglo Americans to regard Latino graduates at American Universities (often the children of illiterate immigrants) as a kind of upper-class Latinos, the "Big Brothers" of their counterparts in South-of-the-border countries. This is unwarranted, and a threat to all who read Spanish literature.

[oinrocinu]

Hi!

I'm a Spanish native speaker too.... but I don't agree wtih you.

[LucentShade]

I agree that any work, literary or cinematic, is virtually always better in its native language. (Anime originally in Japanese translated to English is a good example of this.) A lot of the time, one language has structures and subtleties that don't exist another language. For instance, the signifigance of a switch from the usted to the t� forms in Spanish can be difficult or awkward to show in English. Or, there's the Japanese honorific system, which can convey a lot to those who understand it, but is often left out or butchered laughably in English translation.

I'm a (native English-speaking) student of Spanish, and I think someday I'd like to translate literature between the two languages. I want to preserve the beuaty and style of the native language in translation, but I also want to create flowing, natural-sounding prose in the second language. Maybe such a thing is not possible, but I'd like to try.

[Ayaba]

I may sound self-centered, but I am not talking about me. I am referring to the translations made in many Latin American countries that I found wanting, and about so many wonderful Spanish translators who are at the same time accomplished writers and scholars on their own right.

One translation is bad, the other is very good; and the person who did the good one chose to find the exact match, or the closest one; the person who did the bad translation, instead of taking his time, rendered the general idea, according with his own crude fancy, sometimes turning a good literary work, into a plain, dull story.

In fact, in many Spanish-speaking countries the problem is not that they use different words, but that most of the population choose to use a reduced set of words. The Spanish vocabulary is rich and is common among all Spanish-speaking people, even the most arcane words.
If anyone thinks that literature should cater to the needs of people that chooses to restrict their use of the Spanish language to fifty words (some of them regionalisms), is doing a disservice to culture in general.

After reading great books from Charlotte Br�nte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley, to William Faulkner, among others, I can say that their richness and complexity of their works are hard to transform but entirely possible.

But to sound less arrogant I accept that in South America there are highly talented writers, and highly discriminating readers too.

[oinrocinu]

Just a question: If somebody translates a book written in English and put "usted" instead of "tu" for every "you", �do you think that this impoverishes or make worse the book?
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Para sentir no bastan cinco sentidos...

[Ayaba]

Certainly many Spanish-speaking readers would object a book whose characters speak only using "usted", regardless of rank; but not Colombians, whom use "usted" even when talking to their sons, spouses and parents. I find this awkward and stilted. And the awkwardness continues with "le", instead of "te", and "quisiera", instead of "quisieras", and so on. I would not enjoy a translation made in such a way. Consider two lowborn blood brothers, sailors, talking to each other with "usted", or a a conversation between two jailbirds, longtime friends, mob soldiers, using second person, or between two lovers, even of different social stations. Maybe the Colombian translation which substituted every "you" for "usted" should be copywrited to mend the awkward "ustedes", across the board.

A good translation looks at the context.

[LucentShade]

I would also be a little annoyed to see a translated book using usted exclusively, if it didn't match the level of formality between the characters. However, these things aren't unheard of; the book "El cuarto de atr�s," by Carmen Mart�n Gaite (1978) features two characters that talk to each other in the usted form for virtually the entire book.

[Gary Chambers]

I wouldn�t have believed it a few years ago, but I�m convinced there�s a shift from hard copy books and other printed literature to ebooks and literary Web sites. I worked in traditional publishing for over 25 years, and watched as various factors such as satellite TV, convergence of news media ownership and soaring costs of paper and printing services gradually pounded the traditional publishing industry into submission. The logical next move seemed to be a shift onto the Internet, but there was also consumer resistance to reading full length ebooks. Even now massive numbers of people continue refusing to pay for periodicals like online newspapers and magazines.

Despite these considerations, however, advances in browsing technology for ebook readers is resulting in rapid growth of electronic book sales. It also seems clear that the only reason newspapers have yet to make the Internet pay, is the bad marketing policies of newspaper publishers, and not a lack of economic opportunity in the medium. Millions of people now look to the Internet as their main source of news and information. With that many readers, any newspaper or magazine that can�t make Web publishing pay is obviously poorly managed.

All these factors considered, I recently bit the bullet and decided to move out of journalism, which has been my writing mainstay for many years, and into electronic fiction publishing. My personal objective as a writer is to get some ebooks into circulation, plus launch an online periodical. At this stage, I�m mainly interested in testing online reader reactions to various genres, writing styles and plotting techniques. The workshop I use for this is Literotica.com., a popular literary Web site with thousands of daily readers and hundreds of participating authors including many who write in English as a second language. As the name suggests, Literotica.com publishes mainly erotic fiction, but also has categories for non erotic works. Even its erotic story content is separated into sub genres such as science fiction, mystery and romance.

Most of my work leans toward the romance sub genre, but so far it also retains a strong erotic element. Writing for Literotica is strictly a volunteer proposition. Nominal cash prizes are awarded in contests for the best stories, but otherwise there is no direct financial gain in writing for Literotica. The fiction on the site is totally free and surfers are not required to submit credit card details or other personal data. Therefore, I would like to invite any readers over 18 years of age to visit my member�s page at Literotica and enjoy reading one or more of my stories. At the end of each story there is an opportunity to rate the story on a one to five scale, plus a method of providing public or private feedback. Of course, I also invite you to make use of these features to let me know what you think of the stories. I�m especially interested to know which stories readers might like to read, expanded to novel length.

My latest offering is a story called The Great Architect, which is a tale very losely based on Paolo Soleri, an Arizona based architect I greatly admire. Of course, there is no indication that Soleri is a sexual hedonist like the architect in my story, but I also included some of Soleri�s basic architectural theories in the story. At over 10,000 words,The Great Architect is the longest piece of fiction I�ve posted on the site to date.

Other stories include Shayden�s Tower, the story of a pair of adventurous lovers who decide to use a very different type of architecture to enhance their sex lives; Summer Stock is about a young stagehand who discovers his passion for the opposite sex, through a string of nightly encounters with a sexy actress beneath the stage of an old Vaudeville theatre. Summer Stock is the shortest of my current stories, at under 4,000 words.

If you would like to read one or more of these stories, or perhaps browse through work by other writers and poets, please feel free to visit my Literotica.com member�s page at: http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=273033.
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Gary Chambers
[email protected]

[nurodude]

[nurodude]