Lost in Translation

Where I once thought that transferring novels and poetry to the internet was merely a transitional issue, I now believe that I was sorely mistaken. I have read Haiku that were originally written in Japanese and I thought that they were rather simplistic at the time. But later on I realized that there was something lost. Something that cannot transcend the barriers set forth by different languages. Where a poem in German may rhyme very well and flow easily off the lips, once translated to Portuguese, it may sound as if a child who does not understand syntax wrote the poem. The same thing could be argued in relation to the book to e-book issue. Will a hyperlink in the middle of a text ruin how one navigates the text? As noted by some of my classmates, things like hyperlinks will cause them to click them immediately without even finishing the sentence or even the rest of the passage.

Even text online without regards to hyperlinks can be problematic. When people send documents or retype passages for other people to see, errors can be made. And these errors make something new every time. A new work is written when there is simply a minor coding error, almost causing texts to evolve in a sense. Where something in book form says "the olive tree," it can be improperly translated onto a new media source and cause it to say "the oil tree." Granted there is no such thing as an oil tree, it merely serves as a rather crude example of how simple changes can cause different meanings.

The best way to get around the issue of text online would be to merely make some texts exclusively online. There could be authors of books and then there could be another division of authors of eBooks. Online poets could create a niche for themselves and make the internet do things that would be otherwise impossible for the pen and paper poet. Hyperlinks could create new avenues for poets and writers to work with, to make their work more interactive and even allow people to get more of a personal meaning by taking their own avenue (somewhat like those Choose Your Own Adventure). Rather than trying to force the page from a book onto the screen, people should try to adapt to the screen and use it for a different avenue.