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)