Are there books that simply can't be translated?
Pic (A Void) unrelated?
one must take care not to conflate 'translatable' with 'explicable in another language'many forms of wordplay do not translate, but can be described and explained
Reading Thomas Carlyle I often wonder how a translator would tackle him. But I'm sure it's been done with success.
>>24144922>>24144935About translating this book: you will fail, no doubt.This is simply too hard.But as that anon said >>24144938, it is fairly straightforward to grasp how that opus works, and you could try to do it your way.
>>24144922My existential pain as a kissless hugless handholdless virgin.
>>24146184>About translating this book: you will fail, no doubt.>This is simply too hard.At least explain why
>>24146203I just did.
>>24146207You didn't explain why it's hard
>>24146184>you will fail, no doubt. This is simply too hard.?
>>24144922imo most of the ancient Chinese classics like the Daodejing, Zhuangzi, Hanfeizi. They use a high level of ambiguity and "equal" sentences (idk how to explain this its like making each clause have 4 words).To translate these works is to fill in the blanks deliberately left by the writers, and thus ruin the experience of reading and understanding them.
>>24144922All of poetry. No exception.
>>24144922This book
>>24144922The translations are bad but they do exist. Obviously it attracted a lot of attention for translators. The true autism of constrained writing was Les Revenantes.
>>24144922I think these two short stories might be some of the most untranslatable things I've ever read.https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/13/the-proverbial-murder-mystery/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/03/the-study-of-anglophysics/You could also argue for something like Su Hui's Star Gauge:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Gauge
>>24144922>>24144922This book was lame. It was some lame murder mystery, and then every time a character ALMOST recalled or remembered the letter "e" existed someone died or something bad happened. I remember being overtly annoyed by this book and finishing it out of spite. Something about Melville and Moby-Dick was important to the plot too.
>>24146184Amazing quality post by local High IQ anon confounds hoi polloi! >>24146203Truly, this author's opus is particularly difficult. Books by not only Woolf, Arno Schmidt, DFW, but also Pynchon's V or Gravity's Rainbow: smooth sailing. But it is just for fun, a play, a jolly good romp, you could say.
>>24146391This faggot loves his edgy prose. Sagarana also can't be translated
