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Found this and thought it was hilarious

Antje77 said:
It's an interesting puzzle to find them all, and by searching for them you read something new every time!
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Shakespeare is not easy to read even in translation, but in the original it is incredibly difficult, because Shakespeare's language and modern English are not very similar. I gave up in the middle of Hamlet, and almost at the very beginning of King Lear, although these are my favorite works. But this piece of text made me realize how far the Russian translation is from the original. It's like we lost half the form when we translated, but we kept the idea and the content. For example, Gloucester is more cultured in translation, and we also lose the wonderful joke with the two meanings of the word "conceive"


KENT
Is not this your son, my lord?

GLOUCESTER
His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it.

KENT
I cannot conceive you.

GLOUCESTER
Sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed.
Do you smell a fault?

KENT
I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it
being so proper.

GLOUCESTER
But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year
elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.
 
Zhnyaka said:
But this piece of text made me realize how far the Russian translation is from the original. It's like we lost half the form when we translated, but we kept the idea and the content.
Click to expand...
Translating is a very difficult job. Stay close to the original but lose wit and rhythm, and double meaning, or translate more freely but run the risk of diverting so far from the original that it almost becomes a new work.
 
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