Talk:Olaf Bull

Why there was an NPOV tag

Yeah for now the article puts a little too much praise in wrong tone. Williamborg, if you could help me with what you ment in some of the sentences, starting with "Consciousness that nothing can last deeply underlies his poetry and impresses itself on much of his other work.". Thanks. Kevin_b_er 05:32, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

The translation

Crummy phrasing, wasn't it. When one gets into translating, a strange thing happens. Translating from Russian, definite & indefinite articles vanish. Translating from the language of the French leaves the vocabulary of the person doing the translation rather flowery and needlessly, redundantly verbose. The mind plays a strange trick and these forms seem perfectly acceptable while translating.

In this case, translating from the Norwegian Wikipedia, the word order gets reversed and obscure terms can become more obscure if not carefully translated.

I reviewed the translated Norwegian Wiki article and revised the section reading, “Consciousness that nothing can last deeply underlies his poetry and impresses itself on much of his other work. Although transitoriness and evanescence is a recurrent theme in his poetry, he overlays this with an awareness that art is important and illustrates this by powerful use of mood and voice.” → “His poetry and work conveys a melancholy sense that all is transitory—that nothing lasts. In spite of this disconsolate tone, his recurrent, powerful use of mood, faultless form and expressive voice communicates his belief that, although evanescent, art and beauty are important.”

The only thing harder to translate than an art critic’s discussion of poetry, is the poetry itself!

Now onto the POV tag

• As as to point of view tag—things written about a poet are point of view—you'll note my words changed, but the sense of the sentences did not. What else can one do when describing poetry but provide someone’s POV about what the poet was trying to convey (i.e., what the poet's POV was) and what your POV was as you read it? I didn't write the original; I simply translated it as someone requested on the Wikipedia:Translation into English page.
• I have only found a copy of a couple of Bull's poems to get my own impression (in Norwegian-don't think he's been translated-don't think he'd be easy to translate); I'd agree with the Norwegian author's characterization, but I'm not going to claim to be a poetry critic or an expert in poetry or literature. So I looked to other sources...
• I added a Bach quote which parallels the original assessment; perhaps even more critically than the one you disliked. But it is sourced and it is a direct quote.
• Karen Larson, in A History of Norway; Princeton University Press, describes his work as "somber."

If you still think the article is POV, you'll need to find someone to provide a different translation, or add new content from another source that suggests Bach is a cheerful poet; I doubt you'll find such a source.

Cheers - Williamborg 06:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Didn't expect sources to be added when you revised it! Quite good, and more than I expected. I have no qualms anymore about the tone of the wroding in the article. I did a little bit of work on the final paragraph as well. Kevin_b_er 08:39, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Can see what you meant about the tone of the review. I personally suspected it was the original article's author's attempt to convey why that, although depressing, the poet's work was good enough that he won broad recognition. That's one of the problems with translations; unless you know the topic yourself or have other sources, it is hard to do more than convey what the original author said as best you can. Glad you're more comfortable with it now. Williamborg 12:52, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

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Clean up

I have cleaned up the article per Wikipedia:Manual of Style, including:

• removed dates links per WP:MOSUNLINKDATES;
• remove repeated links and links to ordinary English words per WP:OVERLINK;
• removed the "=" in in front of translations - this is not the standard style;
• spelled out acronyms on first use per WP:ACRONYM; * etc.

Ground Zero | t 19:36, 28 December 2011 (UTC)