Summary: Comparing Languages Through Translation
We must assume that translators strive to maintain or enhance the force and vividness of the source text. Thus the use of translations provides a particularly stringent test of each language’s capacities (within the limits, of course, of the skills of individual translators). The translation task gives us a window into the maximum possibilities of a language, as it strives to adapt to the demands of a source language. Even under these strong demand factors, verb-framed languages apparently are less concerned with the domain of manner of motion than are satellite-framed languages (though with some possibilities of expanded attention to manner using special means). And verb-framed languages break paths up into somewhat different sorts of segments. Nevertheless, each of the translations of The hobbit provides a great and gripping story—the same essential story that Tolkien must have had in mind. The last sentence of Berman and Slobin’s Relating events in narrative is an appropriate conclusion to this little study of translation as well: “We are left, then, with a new respect for the powerful role of each individual language in shaping its own world of expression, while at the same time representing but one variant of a familiar and universally human pattern” (1994: 641).
This chapter is dedicated to my friend and colleague, Ruth Berman, who has been a faithful companion along the path sketched out here. Our work together, over many years, has been crosslinguistic and typological (and lively and fun). Here I offer a glimpse of how the search for the frog led to the adventures of hobbits and how they are seen through translations into some of the languages that we studied together.
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Slobin, D.I. (2005). Relating Narrative Events in Translation. In: Ravid, D.D., Shyldkrot, H.BZ. (eds) Perspectives on Language and Language Development. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-7911-7_10
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