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What's a book you consider impossible to properly translate out of its original language? Or the opposite. (hexbear.net)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I recently learned about the debacle that was the Swedish translation of Tolkien, and it got me wondering: “are there books that can only exist within a masterful use of the authors native tongue?”.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Not books but plays:
I think The Laramie Project would be very difficult to translate. Lots of idioms.
Shakespeare too. You either lose the rhythm or the content. I've read a lot of really bad translations of shakespeare.