Excellent article! I totally agree about children's books being good for learning languages, I've got a book of German language bedtime stories which I love reading.
Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate, and (for me) the most difficult type of literary writing to read in a foreign language.
Interestingly the word for honey in Scottish Gaelic is 'mil' and the word for sweet is 'milis'.
Thank you! Yes, it must be near impossible to translate poetry "correctly", and so strange to think that there are writers who will never know what their own work says. Still, a good and remarkable thing that we can translate these pieces at all!
And I love that about the Gaelic word for honey/sweet. I've done some more digging and I think the 'mel' of 'melody' possibly has the same origin.
Excellent article! I totally agree about children's books being good for learning languages, I've got a book of German language bedtime stories which I love reading.
Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate, and (for me) the most difficult type of literary writing to read in a foreign language.
Interestingly the word for honey in Scottish Gaelic is 'mil' and the word for sweet is 'milis'.
Thank you! Yes, it must be near impossible to translate poetry "correctly", and so strange to think that there are writers who will never know what their own work says. Still, a good and remarkable thing that we can translate these pieces at all!
And I love that about the Gaelic word for honey/sweet. I've done some more digging and I think the 'mel' of 'melody' possibly has the same origin.