Winnie Ille Pu and Reading in L2

As a Latin lover, I’ve had the joy of running across the work, Winnie Ille Pu, a Latin translation of A. Milne’s classic Winnie the Pu. This translation entertains readers in many unique ways but at the same time raises many interesting questions about what exactly gets “lost in translation” when we read in an L2 language.

What jumps out most strikingly, perhaps, is the great situational irony in the translation of an innocent children’s tale into a language that can only be read by highly educated adults. This has profound effects in our reading of the text. Passages inevitably gain a grandiose ambiance when translated, for example. One reviewer on Amazon describes how, “'Ior mi,' dixit sollemniter, 'egomet, Winnie ille Pu, caudam tuam reperiam'” simply means “'Eeyore,' he said solemnly, 'I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for you.'”

Even if we read the Latin words in the “voice” of Winnie the Pu, the very fact that they’re in Latin touches them with an indelible formality, a product of our cultural perceptions of Latin as the language of Cicero, Caesar and Vergil rather than an everyday language of children. In this way, our culturally ingrained perceptions of a language irreversibly influences how we interpret the tone of the original author.

This departs from the “lost in translation” patterns that we most find when reading translated works. Most often, we think of poor translation taking place at the lexical level, wherein words in one language represent concepts that are not easily conveyed in another. The Greek concept of eudaemonia, often translated as “happiness” but more closely meaning “human flourishing” comes to mind. Techne, meaning “craftsmanship” or “skill”, but also referring to music and art, also provides a good example.

Or, alternatively, we think of mistranslation taking place at higher levels of grammatical structure. Yoda’s VOS speech makes his syntax unique in English, but translators had to come up with new syntactic patterns to give Yoda’s style uniqueness in languages where VOS is acceptable. See (http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/gfoov/what_is_yodas_syntax_in_foreign_dubssubtitles_in/). Another favorite example at the orthographic level involves translation of Tom Marvovlo Riddle’s name in English, an anagram of “I am Voldemort”. This anagram was lost in many translations of Harry Potter.

But as Winnie Ille Pu demonstrates, changes in meaning due to translation can occur at the purely pragmatic and cultural level. Our cultural perceptions of any L2 language, whether Latin or Spanish, affect our reading of its texts. Fully appreciating the meaning of any text as an author intended requires not only diligence on the part of any translator, but proper effort on the part of the reader in attempting to take on a native L1 cultural attitude towards the text and language. But to what extent is this even possible? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to read Winnie Ille Pu as a Roman child might, and if this is the case, what does this imply for my ability to read and translate Japanese and other L2’s where correct perception of tone and voice can have tremendous real world consequences? What can people who widely use an L2 do to erase their cultural perceptions and interpret textual subtleties most naturally?

Whatever they are, I hope to be able to learn these techniques so that I might fully appreciate the playful subtleties of:

Cur ursus clamat?
Cur adeo mel amat?

Or, in Milne’s original words:

Isn’t it funny
How a bear likes honey?