I once had the unusual task of helping to translate a lengthy set of requirement specification documents for a migration between to ERP systems from German to English.
My overall impression is that German lends itself far easier to lengthy, nested, convoluted sentences. You can build long sentences in English, too, but their structure tends to be ... flatter?
So in translating, I would often break up monstrous monolithic sentences ("Bandwurmsatz", as we say in German) into several shorter ones.
It is different, I guess, when translating literature, but translating literature is probably really, really hard anyway. So try to have pity on those poor people who had to translate Kafka.
I generally prefer to read literature in its original language, but English is the only foreign language I know well enough to do that... :(
My overall impression is that German lends itself far easier to lengthy, nested, convoluted sentences. You can build long sentences in English, too, but their structure tends to be ... flatter?
So in translating, I would often break up monstrous monolithic sentences ("Bandwurmsatz", as we say in German) into several shorter ones.
It is different, I guess, when translating literature, but translating literature is probably really, really hard anyway. So try to have pity on those poor people who had to translate Kafka.
I generally prefer to read literature in its original language, but English is the only foreign language I know well enough to do that... :(