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abadidea
@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange  ·  activity timestamp last month

In all seriousness, people's ability to connect emotionally with ancient cultures is heavily impeded by stuffy academic translations that follow form over meaning. For example, the translation on wikipedia falls for the classic pitfall of being overly invested in the exact units of measurement given, even though "a thousand li" and "a whole dan" are very much vibes-based, not precise measurements in a mathematical treatise.

All translation is interpretation; if someone wants no interpretation between them and the text, then they have to knuckle down and learn the original language (hey, that's what I'm doing right now). Being afraid to actually speak the idiom of your audience in your translation only strangles it into a lifeless lump lying between languages, lacking the spark that drove someone to write it and others to preserve it.

#translation #localization

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