Translations

Quote 1: "Gregory Samsa woke from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug." - 
       In this quote the diction is very plain. The vocabulary is not advanced and it would be understandable for all ages. The word "uneasy" make the tone known though. The plainness of the text does not take way from what is trying to be said. They also have long syntax to emphasize the change and the confusion that is occuring with Samsa. Longer syntax is supposed to help with creating order which happens in the sentence in chronical order. He woke up, it was morning, and then found that he was a giant bug. The is also no ambiguity. The translator tells us exactly what happens and how it happened. 

Quote 2: "When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning he found he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug." -
       There is much more descriptive diction. By describing the quote as "troublesome", and using the word "transformed" the readers can get a better grip on what has happened to Samsa. The quote tells us the dream was unpleasant and when he woke up he turned into the bug. By saying "transformed" it also implies that Samsa was not a bug to begin with that he was something else. That creates some mystery and ambiguity about the situation. Choosing to not tell the reader what lead to the this transformation or what he was transformed from lets the author foreshadow events and talk vaguely about past events.The syntax here was long to also create confusion because we do not know what happened to Samsa and what will happen to Samsa. 

Quote 3: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." - 
     This quote has good imagery in the sense that the reader can picture what exactly is going on to Samsa. We know what an uneasy dream is and a gigantic bug. Those descriptions help the reader picture what has happened and what's currently going on. The structure is set up up so the reader can easily follow what is happening.There is no fluff in between the important information. The information is given and the translator leaves in only the important parts. They don't think that the dream is all that important but the transformation into the bug is.

Quote 4: "One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin." - 

    This quote is highlighting and stating that all aspects of what happened to Samsa was important. The dark diction used shows how the translator saw and interpreted the transformation as something otherworldly. They think it is all unnatural and that this is a punishment. I conclude this because of the word vermin and how it is typically defined. The structure is also for more advanced readers. The word monstrous and vermin are words that not a lot of younger kids use, so this translator is trying to talk to older generations.


Compare/contrast 
 What does this exercise bring up about the difficulty of reading translated texts? How do different translations effect the tone of the sentence?
     Word choice, syntax, and imagery shift the meaning by making the tone more or less intense. The word choice and the syntax work close together and they help establish how the translator feels about the piece. In quote 2 and 4 the diction was intense and really negative which helped showed how the translators felt about opening the story. Though they still opened it in different ways the overall meaning and message they were trying to convey was the same, like quotes 1 and 3. Imagery helped with the meaning because all except quote 1 used descriptive imagery. The use of this helped establish what was important and what the translator wanted you to pay attention to. That was used in quotes 2  through 4.
         I definitely think that imagery is more effective and better to get an audience to see what is going on and the better the beginning of the story will be. The imagery in quote 4 was the best and best showed what had happened to Samsa. Though two others used imagery that quote used it most effectively. By using imagery the translator is enabling the reader to become a part of the story by seeing and experiencing what the characters are which makes it the most effective technique.
     It brings up the difficulty of  some words not having translations in some languages. Some words are specific to that language and phrases to that region. By translating the text those words or phrases might be lost among the translations done.  Different people might see the text differently and then translate it how they see it. That brings in personal experience and their culture which may take away from the original culture it was written in or for. The different translations also affect the tone because the translators see the story in different ways and want to write the beginning in a intense way to jump into the action rather than build tension.