Can a translation surpass the original?

Depends on what you mean exactly. A translation can surpass the original in beauty for example, but of course it won't in accuracy, it will always be a different work.

>>24476672 (OP)
Yes but none of his

>>24476672 (OP)
Yes, but not Pope's Homer

>>24476672 (OP)
Pope is a joke. Homer is the divinity of poetry.

You have to assume the translations of Dan Brown type novels are superior to the original. Any translator would be a professional writer, and even if they tried to mirror him as closely as possible it seems unlikely they would manage to be quite so clunky. Their basic sense of how sentences work in their language would never be as bad as his command of English

>>24476686
>Pope's Iliad was acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal".

>>24476672 (OP)
>can a translation surpass the original
>pic of pope
Lol. lmao even

>>24478366
Anglo critics always overrate their shitty writers and fat "Dr." Johnson was no exception, quite the opposite. Little island syndrome. Even a word-for-word translation of the original would be much better than Pope's Iliad.

>>24476672 (OP)
Definitely.

>>24478366
Johnson belonged to the worst age of English culture. Do you really want to agree with all of his literary judgements?

>>24478366
Pope's Iliad is my favorite translation, but it doesn't surpass the original. If you want to make a translation better than the original, go after smaller fish.

People claim Eça de Queiroz's translation of King Solomon Mines is much superior to the original

>>24478366
Lmao what a retarded claim. Pope's only redeeming quality is the rhyme, which is achieved by writing a new poem from scratch rather than translating the original.
No nation could hope my ass

What's the best translation for the Iliad?

>>24476672 (OP)
the bible translations

>>24479435
>>24478366

how would i know? i'd have to read both the translation and the original, and why would do that?

>>24476684
How can a translation surpass the original in accuracy? There is nothing to measure the accuracy of the original against.

>>24476757
Omg you dunked on Dan Brown HELL YEAH BROTHER

Nobody really prefers the more faithful translations of Omar Khayyam over Fitzgerald's version. Then again, he started to call it a rendition as opposed to a translation from the second edition onwards.

>>24476672 (OP)
>Virgil came to life again in 1514 partly or possibly because Gavin Douglas knew the sea better than Virgil had.

>Gavin Douglas had made something of the Aeneids that I, at any rate, like better than Virgil's Latin.

>>24481237
>How can a translation surpass the original in accuracy?
It can't.
>There is nothing to measure the accuracy of the original against.
Yes, the original

Book translations are like song covers. Sometimes you have to settle for a translation but in the end you're reading the translator's interpretation of the original.
A 100% accurate translation could only be achieved if the writer himself translated it.

>>24481378
>implying the critic-translator doesn’t understand the text more deeply than the author ever could
A good translation is always more accurate to the authors intentions than the original.

>>24481398
you mean less subtle?

>>24481415
No, more subtle. The translator can tease out subtlety and complexity in the text which the original author was unaware of, much as a skilled director can create more depth and meaning in Shakespeare than he originally had on the Elizabethan stage or on the page.

>>24481504
>a skilled director can create more depth and meaning in Shakespeare
why aren't we studying them then

>>24481504
RETARD

>>24476672 (OP)
no

>>24476672 (OP)
always