A Bunch of Translations

#1: "Gregory Samsa woke from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug."
This translation is...
- Direct
-Emotionless
- Simple vocabulary
-Chronological order
- Basic sentence structure
- Lacking detail

#2: "When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning he found he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug."
This translation is...
- Formal
-Descriptive
- Slightly complex sentence structure, longer sentences
- Use of elaborate words - (troubled, enormous)
- Some detail

#3: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
This translation is...
- Direct
- Slightly complex sentence structure
- Uses more descriptive words for imagery such as insect instead of bug
- Some detail

#4: "One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin."
- Most descriptive
- Choppy sentence structure (long sentence with a lot of commas)
- Very detailed which created a lot of imagery
-Very terrified tone

Analysis

Word choice, syntax, punctuation, and imagery all have impacts on a reader's interpretation of the text.  In the fourth translation combined all elements to create a very horrified tone.  While all the other translations used bug and insect, this one used monstrous vermin.  This leads to the reader perceiving Gregor's transformation as a much more horrifying experience.  The first translation however lacks very descriptive word choice or complex sentence structure, which causes the translation to be much less effective in conveying the dramatic nature of the situation.  The imagery created in the fourth translation also created a better picture in my mind of what was going on, so I was more connected to the text.  To me, being more connected to the text then means that the author was more effective in communicating their story and meaning.  Therefore, word choice, syntax, punctuation, and imagery can all be altered to effect how a reader will interpret a given text.


This exercise brings up that the difficulty of reading translated texts is that you never truly know for sure what the author's original intention was.  Because of the wide variety of word choice and sentence structure that change from language to language, it is almost impossible to stay directly true of the author's intentions.  An author chooses each word for a specific reason, therefore when it is changed to a synonym, it can greatly affect interpretation.  Word choice can greatly impact and create the tone of the text, so once again, changing a word to it's synonym can then alter the tone and interpretation.  In conclusion, word choice, syntax, punctuation, and imagery all are factors used in creating an author's intended purpose and can change the way a reader interprets the text.