Current Events > Basically I'm of the opinion that The Divine Comedy cannot be properly translate

(+) Yeah! (+)

d into another language. It was originally written in Italian and the minutiae of the details in the sentences is lost when trying to take it out of its native language and into another. Not to mention the many, many, MANY allusions that people in the native culture may just intuitively understand but foreign readers will, at the very LEAST, will need a LONG footnote just to begin to wrap their head around.

Of course I'm not saying you can't pick up a translated of Inferno and just sit down and enjoy it, you totally can. But it's kinda like emulating games. You'll get an approximation of what the original is like but it is not at all going to be the same thing on an emulator.

So, you can read Italian?

Okay

Not if you have a wide sense of literary knowledge. I didn't have a issue with it. Now one that does give me trouble is the Illiad. I think I read like 5 pages. I was like I'll just read the synopsis

I'll let you know how true this is when I get to C2.

I'm pretty sure the language is less of an issue than it being contemporary Italian political fanfiction masquerading as Biblical fanfiction.

Like, I'm pretty sure the world has largely forgotten the White Guelphs.

DrizztLink posted...

I'm pretty sure the language is less of an issue than it being contemporary Italian political fanfiction masquerading as Biblical fanfiction.

Like, I'm pretty sure the world has largely forgotten the White Guelphs.

I do like how Dantes literal fanfiction changed the way popular culture views hell even hundreds of years later

I sometimes cant believe it was written in the 1300s.

DrizztLink posted...

I'm pretty sure the language is less of an issue than it being contemporary Italian political fanfiction masquerading as Biblical fanfiction.

Like, I'm pretty sure the world has largely forgotten the White Guelphs.

It's probably the greatest work of world literature. What's wrong with it being biblically inspired? And it wasn't "fanfiction", it was Dante's commentary on what was then current events. As well as an incredible, vivid imagining of the realm of Hell.

BlueKat posted...

So, you can read Italian?

Not only Italian, but 700-year old Italian. That's pretty impressive.

Billyionaire posted...

And it wasn't "fanfiction", it was Dante's commentary on what was then current events. As well as an incredible, vivid imagining of the realm of Hell.

I mean, It's Dante's commentary on then-current events, framed through bible fanfiction.

Proto_Spark posted...

I mean, It's Dante's commentary on then-current events, framed through bible fanfiction.

I mean, do you see why what you're saying is inherently contradictory?

Even for native Italian speakers, a lot is lost via archaic language and references that are not immediately understood.

That's what footnotes are for.

It's not just help either.

Anyway Florence was his country, not Italy. Florence was a country for 400+ years.

Finally, Mark Musa's translation is fantastic in English. Try reading a real translation and not just the public domain Longfellow version.

For Dante, hell, purgatory, paradise are all aspects of the human psyche, and the pilgrim, the everyman, will walk through all these places, inevitably.

The Comedy is fantastic and beautiful.

my hot take is that literally everything is untranslatable

Billyionaire posted...

But it's kinda like emulating games. You'll get an approximation of what the original is like but it is not at all going to be the same thing on an emulator.

i feel this way about every translation of anything ever

This doesn't only apply to translations. Once you take art out of its original historical/social context, it becomes a different experience.

Also applies to games. You can enjoy playing an old classic, but you'll never replicate the feeling that the first players had, when that game was blowing minds with its cutting edge visuals.

Billyionaire posted...

I mean, do you see why what you're saying is inherently contradictory?

It isn't. You can have current events fanfiction

Billyionaire posted...

I mean, do you see why what you're saying is inherently contradictory?

um, it is possible to make a fanfiction based on fiction, and a fiction, fan or otherwise, CAN be a commentary on whatever events are happening in the world at the time, so... what are you getting at here?

Sephiroth_C_Ryu posted...

um, it is possible to make a fanfiction based on fiction, and a fiction, fan or otherwise, CAN be a commentary on whatever events are happening in the world at the time, so... what are you getting at here?

fanFICTION isn't fiction if it's based on current events. Especially considering a lot of the people he saw in Hell probably actually, frankly speaking, ended up in Hell according to the sins they committed

Billyionaire posted...

fanFICTION isn't fiction if it's based on current events. Especially considering a lot of the people he saw in Hell probably actually, frankly speaking, ended up in Hell according to the sins they committed

You never seen a fictionalised version of actual events? 'Based on a true story'? 'The events are real, but the dialogue is fictional'? 'Some names and details have been altered to protect the victims'?

Historical fiction is an entire genre, dude.

Billyionaire posted...

fanFICTION isn't fiction if it's based on current events. Especially considering a lot of the people he saw in Hell probably actually, frankly speaking, ended up in Hell according to the sins they committed

I could, if I wanted to, write a harry potter fanfiction with someone that is totally Donald Trump so as to be a commentary about him, but with the character not actually literally him. It would probably be bad since I have no writing experience, but I COULD write that. Someone else who knows how to write COULD write that, and for all I know there are harry potter fanfictions that have a trump-alike in them, or even Trump himself. Or if you swing that way, you could write Biden into a Harry Potter fanfiction if you wanted. Or hell, Twilight or My Little Pony or something.

The mere fact that it is POSSIBLE for a fiction, fan or otherwise, to be a commentary on current events already ruined the argument. You don't need to defend it anymore.

Sephiroth_C_Ryu posted...

I could, if I wanted to, write a harry potter fanfiction with someone that is totally Donald Trump so as to be a commentary about him, but with the character not actually literally him. It would probably be bad since I have no writing experience, but I COULD write that. Someone else who knows how to write COULD write that, and for all I know there are harry potter fanfictions that have a trump-alike in them, or even Trump himself. Or if you swing that way, you could write Biden into a Harry Potter fanfiction if you wanted. Or hell, Twilight or My Little Pony or something.

The mere fact that it is POSSIBLE for a fiction, fan or otherwise, to be a commentary on current events already ruined the argument. You don't need to defend it anymore.

Or, I could write a fictional account of Trump's last week. I'd use the available information as a basis, but invent private dialogue and non-public activities.

Voil: current events fiction.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


No, I don't think so.

Hey TC if a conservative make a horny story about Trump and Putin going on a moonlight walk before Putin invites Trump back to his place for McDonalds and Skiiball, that is a fiction, from a fan based on current events

Billyionaire posted...

fanFICTION isn't fiction if it's based on current events. Especially considering a lot of the people he saw in Hell probably actually, frankly speaking, ended up in Hell according to the sins they committed

Most fiction has current events in it. And honestly the idea it cannot be translated sounds like you view this fictional book way more than it is worth.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3a6a9166.jpg

Sephiroth_C_Ryu posted...

I could, if I wanted to, write a harry potter fanfiction with someone that is totally Donald Trump so as to be a commentary about him, but with the character not actually literally him.

Then that's pure fiction. The currents events part of the equation is literally missing and is no longer there. Making that a totally different sort of story than the one you're claiming the Divine Comedy to be

Billyionaire posted...

Then that's pure fiction. The currents events part of the equation is literally missing and is no longer there. Making that a totally different sort of story than the one you're claiming the Divine Comedy to be

if you insert fictional events into a story based on current events then it becomes fiction. What are you not understanding here?

imma get me some popcorn

Billyionaire posted...

Then that's pure fiction. The currents events part of the equation is literally missing and is no longer there. Making that a totally different sort of story than the one you're claiming the Divine Comedy to be

That is the risk of covering contextually significant current events in your story. Usually when you write in that way it is not designed for a guy 1000 years from then to read it and go "oh my sooo goood! ahh!"
Dante probably didn't intend this at all and infact the book wasn't that well regarded till some dudes much later decided to prop it up and then force school children to read it and tell them it is so good and they must agree as part of their "education" and "culturalization".

WingsOfGood posted...

That is the risk of covering contextually significant current events in your story. Usually when you write in that way it is not designed for a guy 1000 years from then to read it and go "oh my sooo goood! ahh!"
Dante probably didn't intend this at all and infact the book wasn't that well regarded till some dudes much later decided to prop it up and then force school children to read it and tell them it is so good and they must agree as part of their "education" and "culturalization".

bruh the divine comedy is not one of the most enduring works of fiction just because kids have to read Inferno in school.

Its concepts and depictions of the afterlife were absolutely revolutionary considering this was made in the 1300s

Well it's a poem...

The rhymes and context and imagery just can't shine through. Afaik. Sounds like a job for an AI actually

I found a translation that was pretty good. The rhyming and everything blew my mind that it wasn't the original language.
Now as far as understanding it goes...well, I've always had mediocre reading comprehension.

Billyionaire posted...

It was originally written in Italian and the minutiae of the details in the sentences is lost when trying to take it out of its native language and into another.

Italian from the time of Dante Alleghieri is... Well I wouldn't say it's unrecognizable but it's kind of like using Shakespeare as an example of English.

Translating it is just a simple matter of having enough education to understand shit like what does "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" means.

You're telling me the Video Game adaptation isn't accurate?

Choco posted...

my hot take is that literally everything is untranslatable

i feel this way about every translation of anything ever

That's why people getting mad about "translations aren't true to the text" is BS when they're not translations but rather localisations by necessity

ssb_yunglink2 posted...

bruh the divine comedy is not one of the most enduring works of fiction just because kids have to read Inferno in school.

Its concepts and depictions of the afterlife were absolutely revolutionary considering this was made in the 1300s

This work was mostly forgotten about during the enlightenment actually.

Dante wrote about things that were more or less the thought of the common man (maybe not the peasant but those who could read).
Churches of the time have depictions predating him that had gruesome imaginative scenes of hell.

Moreover many writers did the same. Infact around this time there is a famous Islamic work that is so much so that there is a debate that Dante had copied from it.

Other works, pre-Dante

Mechthild of Magdeburg
https://books.google.com/books?id=vH3dYiGG-5sC&pg=PA127

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_de_Purgatorio_Sancti_Patricii

Owen visits four fields of punishment where, as in earlier visionary and apocalyptic accounts, sinners are devoured by dragons, set upon by serpents and toads, fixed to the ground with red-hot nails, baked in furnaces, immersed to various degrees in boiling cauldrons, and hooked to a flaming version of Ixion's wheel. Moving south, Owen and his demonic guides come upon a well from which naked bodies spew forth like sparks and then fall back into the sulphurous flames. "This is the mouth of hell," the demons say as they cast Owen in. He falls endlessly for this well is none other than the realm of utterly lost souls, the bottomless pit described in Revelation 20:1-3.32. No longer a mere spectator, Owen descends into a deadly state of oblivion, forgetting to call on God's name. Through a last-minute divine intervention, Owen remembers the invocation and a tongue of flame lifts him up to safety.

But as it is said to have been "RE-DISCOVERED" after the enlightenment, the divine Comedy became something you had to be culturalized to in every college literature program. Keep in mind when you go to some literature class they are trained to prop it up and tell why you it is so vastly important to the world. To that end, it was a popular work during the Renaissance, and that is to the credit of it.

teep_ posted...

That's why people getting mad about "translations aren't true to the text" is BS when they're not translations but rather localisations by necessity

i mean, sometimes stuff is changed for no reason

Xethuminra posted...

Sounds like a job for an AI actually

What about AI has convinced you it is up for this task?

Intro2Logic posted...

What about AI has convinced you it is up for this task?

AI be like:

The Second Circle of hell, according to Dante Alleghieri, is where God sends those guilty of Hornyposting where they are relentlessly bonked by Doge as punishment.

Tyranthraxus posted...

AI be like:

The Second Circle of hell, according to Dante Alleghieri, is where God sends those guilty of Hornyposting where they are relentlessly bonked by Doge as punishment.

Paradise Lost (written by Dante from the Devil May Cry series) is an allegorical

ssb_yunglink2 posted...

if you insert fictional events into a story based on current events then it becomes fiction. What are you not understanding here?

Writing a character who is supposed to represent Donald Trump into a fantasy novel for children would make it pure fiction.

Billyionaire posted...

Writing a character who is supposed to represent Donald Trump into a fantasy novel for children would make it pure fiction.

Do you think Dante actually went to hell or something?

The divine comedy is literally Dante inserting himself and other people (including his contemporaries) into a completely fictional narrative that one could easily say is just fantasy. I dont understand what your point is

Intro2Logic posted...

What about AI has convinced you it is up for this task?

The vast amount of tedious, overly clever, and loveless figuring that would go into such a thing

Among other reasons I'm sure

Billyionaire posted...

Writing a character who is supposed to represent Donald Trump into a fantasy novel for children would make it pure fiction.

Dante did this with himself and Virgil and others. Pure fiction is the book.

Even hardcore catholic christians understand...it was all made up- the comedy that is.

Why did you start your topic title with the word basically as if we were already having a conversation

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