Is Translating Effective?

#1:As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
#2:Gregory Samsa woke from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug.
#3:When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning he found he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.

#4:One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.
Original: Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt

Analysis is all together so I could make direct comparisons

          
          Word choice affects the meaning of sentences and the tone of sentences because of the connotations and denotations associated with words, as well as the imagery surrounding the word. In this example the words to describe the dream have different meanings. Uneasy to me just means a bad feeling but can easily be shaken off and moved past, troubled creates a little more stress and importance on the negative effects of the dream. Troubled would require more effort to forget about and move past, and finally agitated to me means like seriously troubled and impacted by the bad dream. Another differing word choice that makes a difference in the meaning of the sentences is changed vs transformed. Changed is more casual than transformed. By saying changed the writer suggests Gregor(y) Samsa isn't worried about being a giant bug. Where as  transformed has a bigger significance in that there is a bigger difference between Gregor(y) and the bug he's become. The way each sentence starts impacts the tone of the sentence. The first one begins with as and the last one begins with one morning, both are storyline beginnings to me, more fictional and less likely for this to be a line in a nonfiction book.The other 3rd starts with when and the 2nd starts by getting right into what happened. This creates a more realistic tone, until you find out what happens, and also isn't as dramatic as the other two.Lastly the way what he has become differs. Gigantic insect, giant bug, enormous bug, monstrous vermin are all used to describe the same thing that Gregor(y) has become. The different adjectives to describe the noun bug, enormous and gigantic, give different images of how big the bug is. Gigantic is big but enormous suggests it's even bigger. Then there is monstrous, which suggests it's scary and super big. Also in the sentence that uses monstrous the thing Gregor(y) is transformed into is a vermin. The variation from a bug to a vermin in a different translations create different imagery and meaning. A vermin is something that needs to be killed and gotten rid of where as a bug seems harmless compared to the vermin. 

          The punctuation affects the meaning of the sentences because of how its read. The first 3 have only a period at the end and no commas in between the beginning and end of the sentence. The uninterrupted sentence allows it to be read faster and flows smoother than the fourth sentence that has a comma every two words. The punctuation in the fourth makes it more dramatic and emphasizes every little detail in the sentence, making each one significant to how Gregory transformed into the vermin. The syntax in the sentences add to the tone and meaning of the sentences because it makes the reader either think more about what happened or just move on and know it happened. In this set the syntax of the first three doesn't really impact me. I read them and moved on. the last one has to be read with more thought and slower because of the punctuation so the syntax in combination has more of an impact and after I read it I was considering how he felt about waking up and being a bug. 

For the imagery I put the word choice for what he turned into, into google and heres the results.
From top to bottom: Giant bug, gigantic insect, enormous bug, monstrous vermin.

When looking at these images, you can see the imagery for the first three doesn't very significantly, however the final image is not like the others and is disturbingly different considering they all came from the same original text.

          I don't know how effective the sentences are because there isn't context for the sentences, so I don't know how significant this sentence is to the text, I would guess fairly significant because it has a big piece of character development, but I don't know if Gregor(y) Samsa is supposed to be a victim that happens to be transformed, an evil scientist that wants to terrorize people as a bug, or just a science project gone wrong. Either way each sentence is slightly to very different from each other and then in turn different from the original sentence. By themselves the single sentence might not change of the text overall but if the same translator continues to translate like they do a very different tone could be created from 2 different translators translating the same text.

          When I went to Peru a few Spring Breaks ago the people I was with and our hosts were talking or trying to talk by translating through someone who grew up here but then was doing mission work there so he spoke pretty good Spanish. The problem with translating that this exercise, that article, and my opinion bring up is that meaning is lost. When we were having a conversation we would say what we could in Spanish and then ask Keegan to translate. He would then in other Spanish words ask if they had a word to describe what we were saying. Sometimes there was a direct translation but not always. Or they would say its like... but not really, so they were trying to relate it to things we understood but it still wasn't exactly what they wanted to say. The problem with the translation of books is that all of the book is written by an author with a purpose and intention in mind, but then that is interpreted by the translator and rewritten with different intentions and purpose, even if the translator didn't necessarily intend that. The tone that the original piece has could be the same as a translated piece in parts but overall the tone of each piece might become entirely different. 

Bug Pictures From:
http://www.bizarbin.com/monster-bugs/
https://1pointperspective.wordpress.com/tag/insect/
http://www.realmonstrosities.com/2012/03/what-is-biggest-insect-in-world.html
http://heyinfinity.com/2013/07/03/monstrous-vermin/