Title of a book

Question

Dear friends,

I desperately need help. I’m translating a book from Turkish to English. The title of the book is “Life is not a struggle, struggle is life”. This is the motto the company has been using for 35 years. It did not sound right to me and I changed it into “Life is not about struggling, but the struggling itself is life.” I made a longer sentence which made things worse.

I’d like to know if any or both of the sentences (titles!) sound right to a native speaker.

Thank you very much for your time.

Philip · Accepted Answer

Welcome to the boards, ilksen1969!

They both sound a bit pessimstic, but neither sounds particularly unnatural. What, by the way, is the Turkish title?

Ilksen1969 · Answer

Philip, thank you very much for your help. The Turkish title is "Hayat mücadele degil, mücadele hayattir." and the book is about business managment.

Can you suggest anything to make it sound "optimistic " and/or "very natural" ?

Philip · Answer

My Turkish isn't nearly what it used to be. I would suggest, however, that you consider the word "challenge" instead. That sounds more natural to me, and it seems to avoid the negative concept.

Life isn't the challenge; rather, the challenge is life.

Khoff · Answer

PhilipLife isn't the challenge; rather, the challenge is life.

What's the difference? I don't mean between "challenge" and "struggle"; I mean what's the difference between life being a challenge/struggle and the challenge/struggle being life?

I realize the OP is translating so we're struck with the original title, but neither version seems very meaningful to me.

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you Philip for your sentence, it's been very helpful, I'll send it to my editor tomorrow. And Khoff, I understand your point of view. I think the problem is that the sentence is very compact for a larger meaning it aims to convey. That is why I added up prepositions and so on to grasp the meaning whereas in Turkish the sentence has no problem cause Turkish is very economic, you can get larger meaning with fewer words. In fact, in  Turkish, the writer wants us to acknowledge struggle even larger than life so that one's existence serves in fact to the act of struggle rather than life. That's a very painstaking and agressive way of living a life and I assume it reflects the business world the writer lives in. Thank you again for your time and interest,  please drop me a line if you have any other suggestions

Title of a book

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