Translation
A virtually insurmountable problem facing the translator is how to deal with the author's intentional use of ambiguous terms or of words that have several meanings. An example is the Kafka's use of the German noun Verkehr in the final sentence of the story. 'Verkehr' can mean either traffic or intercourse in both the social or sexual sense. The sentence can be translated as: "At this moment an unending stream of traffic was just going over the bridge." What gives added weight to the obvious double meaning of Verkehr is Kafka's confession to his friend and biographer Max Brod that when he wrote that final line, he was thinking of "a violent ejaculation."
Read more about this topic: The Judgment
Famous quotes containing the word translation:
“The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
—General prologue, Wycliffe translation of the Bible (1384)
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)
“Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 27:6.
KJ translation reads: Faithful are the wounds of a friend.