Page talk:Aleksander Głowacki - O odkryciach i wynalazkach.djvu/23

Ping User:Nihil novi: how about changing the word order: "Suppose that somewhere there lived on clayey ground a primitive people who already knew fire. " -> "Suppose that somewhere a primitive people who already knew fire lived on clayey ground." (also removes the word "there"?) --Piotrus (talk) 03:27, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Ping User:Piotrus: Many thanks for validating Prus's pp. 3–18 !

About your above question:

It is true that different languages often show different preferences in syntax practice.

However, wherever feasible, when translating, it is best to preserve the author's sentence structure and order of sememes. This helps in preserving the flavor of the author's composition – much as with the placement of bits of color in a painting, or of notes in a musical composition. Additionally, the placement of a sentence's elements affects their relative weights: the greatest emphasis falls at the end of the sentence; the second-greatest, at the beginning of the sentence; and the weakest, in the middle.

Specifically in the case of the sentence you quote above: reversing the order as you suggest, changes the tone of Prus's sentence without providing an unequivocal offsetting advantage. There seems, therefore, to be no compelling reason to make the change. I myself have often been tempted, when translating, to make syntactical changes; but experience has taught me, where feasible, to avoid such changes.

Again, thanks for your questions and suggestions to this point – a number of which I have adopted for the translation.

Nihil novi (talk) 06:36, 1 September 2020 (UTC)