Literature and Translation - What would the world be without it?

What is the most translated book in the world? This far, I've never heard any dispute concerning The Bible as the most translated book ever in human history. Reaching a staggering number of more than 2800 languages in whole or in part, the Bible has no competitor in this regard. In fact, no book even get close to half of that number when it comes to translation.

Fragment of Septuagint, translation of Hebrew
Old Testament into Greek

Translating books is not something new. Take the Bible again. Even before A.D., the first portion of it had been translated into Greek for the sake of those who spoke the language better than Hebrew. The practice continued to our age. Here's an infographic by 7Brands containing 50 World's Most Translated Books.

But why? Why does it matter?

A very good reason is that not everybody speaks every language. Not everybody speaks good enough Russian to read Anna Karenina or enough French to enjoy Les Miserables. (To be honest, nobody enjoys Les Mis, it's too sad.) Even if someone speaks a language good enough to understand what it says, mother tongue usually speaks better to the heart.

Some people say, "I don't read translations." I'd like to say, I'm one of them. As long as I understand a language good enough to understand, I'd be happier reading it in its original language than in translation. Bad news is, I only speak my mother tongue and English good enough to read. So, when reading some of my favourite authors, I need to rely on translation. None of us can enjoy the rich variety of literature world without accepting translation.

The second reason is that we are the same species all over the world no matter what language we speak. We experience the same feelings of happiness, joy, sadness, disappointment, and pain. Sad to say, but we suffer the same problems: diseases, economical hardships, injustice, and so on. As much as language is no barrier to our being human, it shouldn't be a barrier to our literature that authentically portrays these things. As Victor Hugo said in his letter regarding Les Miserables translation to Italian: "books must cease to be exclusively French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and  become  European,  I  say  more,  human,  if  they  are  to correspond to the enlargement of civilization." Of course he gave his permission for the translation.

The world was glad he did. Can we even imagine what the world would be without translation of some of the best literature in human history?

For one, we wouldn't have Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus by William Shakespeare, because, although he had Latin education, he loved English so much he almost wouldn't touch anything but translation. Thanks to Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, we have them now. What would the world be without it? I wouldn't be able to insult people who 'speak Greek', and we wouldn't have a Japanese manga called "Salad Days".

Odysseus and the Sirens from Homer's Odyssey,
has been an inspiration for many other great works

Without translation of Homer's Odyssey, no man would imagine his ordinary life as a parallel of Odysseus's adventures as in James Joyce's Ulysses, nor can Tennyson motivate the elderly to try doing something great instead of wasting their time in their comfort zone. Besides, who would we call that submarine captain in Verne's 20000 Leagues under the Sea? Captain Nemo sounds a lot better than Captain Nobody.

If nobody translated Ovid and Homer, Shaw wouldn't write Pygmalion, and we won't have Audrey Hepburn singing My Fair Lady on the big screen. It's even possible that we'd lost some of the best films in the world. I mean, Disney's Hercules and its cute Hades, Troy with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in it, and of course, Percy Jackson.

Can we even think about a world without Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen's Stories? Half of Disney animations would be gone.

The world won't be the same place without literature translation. And I'm pretty sure, it won't be a better place without it.

Historical Fiction Characters - The Book Version vs. The Real One

Richard III. Henry V. Antony. Zhuge Liang. As a reader, we encounter so many historical yet fictional characters in our readings. The dramatized aspects of these characters may move us to strong likes or dislikes, even love and hate, and yet..

Are they mostly fictional or are they mostly historical?

It's not an easy thing to answer, and its answer may or may not influence our feelings towards those characters. After all, we read historical fictions mostly for fun. If we want real history, it's better to check the nearest history book available - and there are tons of them. The real pleasure in historical fictions depicting historical characters is imagining people like us making decision and the things that they underwent in consequence of that decision, reading and imagining that those people, great people in history were just like us in many aspects, and yet they were great.

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

When reading historical fictions, sometimes it's difficult to separate the real person with the person in the story. If the story and plot are well-researched and well-prepared, or if there's any slight historical basis to believe in the storyline, it's even more difficult to separate fiction from reality.

For instance, long ago I watched a film (I can't remember the title) about the relationship between Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I. In that film, Raleigh and Elizabeth I had a sort-of romantic relationship, platonic maybe, but they adored each other, and yet their hands were tied because it's against any political interest for the Queen to marry Raleigh. Just impossible.

Anyway, long after watching that, I found that Raleigh was actually a poet (and a captain, but I knew it from the film). Guess what I found.

"Passions are likened best to floods and streams: The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;"

Suddenly the film seemed real. I have a proof now, don't I? My diary entry says, "If it's true that he wrote these lines for Elizabeth I, then they would be some of the most beautiful lines about unrequited love ever written in mankind's history." The same thing happens in so many other instances where the fiction and the history are so intertwined that it's impossible to dismiss either once you read both.

So, which one do you like best, the fictional or the real people? For me, it's safer to say that I love somebody and somebody as depicted in this and that book. Real persons are more complicated than fictional characters, and it's impossible to scrutinize their hearts and feelings now. Their qualities are far from certain and the real them might not be what they seemed. But fiction, fiction is what we believe to happen, what we believe existed. It's up to us to judge, to analyse, to hate and to love a fictional character, without really offend the real one dead.