Every piece of writing sounds better in its original language, it seems. If you translated, let's say, "The BFG",by Roald Dahl, Into Spanish or French, it would wetten the story because the main joke relies on the fact that the Giant speaks garbled English. I know, you can make him speak poorly in other languages, too, but the jokes within this don't hold in other languages. For example, I don't believe that Being and bean sound the same in Spanish like they do in English. Now on to songs and poetry. Well written ones don't sound like they should, espescially if they rely on rhyme. And Asian languages are so different that it is hard to even find a translation scholars agree on. I'm not saying translating from English to whatever other language is the only problem. I always liked the sound of the full title of Don Quixote in Spanish than in English, even though I can never remember what it is .

jimthedog

It is a proverb of sorts that a lot gets lost in translation. I don't remember if it was you or your alter ego who expressed an interest in learning Latin. I now occasionally enjoy going back to Caesar, using a "trot" (translation) when I get stuck. I get more out of Caesar now than I did in highschool. With the translation beside the original, working from one to the other, you might get enough out of it to make it enjoyable. Of course you will not get the fine points the way you would doing it the hard way.

You are perfectly correct in that no translation is ever as good as the original; given the nature of language, it can hardly be otherwise.

I have read at least a half dozen translations of Dante's Divine Comedy including those of John Ciardi and Dorothy Sayers, which are accounted amoung the best, but have never read any which I thought really did justice to Dante's language.

However, there have been some really successful translations, which amount to a work of genius on the part of the translator. Bocaccio's Decameron is one of my favorite works of literature and I have two translations at home, one in ordinary English, which is quite good, and the other in pseudo-Elizabethan English, which is inspired. The name of this genius translator escapes me at the moment. I call it pseudo-Elizabethan because while it's intended to sound like Elizabethan English, it was actually written at the end of the 19th century. The English is frequently as funny in its own right as the Italian is, when it's intended to be funny.

Dear Bob: my grandfather's copy of the Decameron had the story about putting the Devil back into Hell in the original Italian. I was intrigued enough to get an Italian dictionary, and it was worth the effort.

Can't quite agree that all tralated texts are worse, I've done translations (of some pretty poor texts) where the quality of the final product was far more succinct than the original. These texts were, or course of an informative style.
I started reading some geezer's translation of Umberto Eco'
s 'L'ISOLA DEL GIORNO PRIMA', and ouch... I got to about page 80 and gave the book back to the friend. I've since read a Spanish-German translation, ...far better. The worst thing about the English translation was that it was good enough to let you realise he was desecrating an excellent work. I still shudder at the thought.

putting the devil in Hell
You had a racy edition, Bill. My copy had the relevant parts (I'm sure you know which ones) in Latin!!