In Praise of Translation
In Praise of Translation

Summary/Abstract: It’s all very odd. Down the centuries, few activities can have contributed more to the spread of civilised ideas than the work of the translator. At seminal moments in the history of knowledge—seventh-century Arabia, medieval and renaissance Europe— its role in the dissemination of learning was paramount. Yet few comparable activities seem to have attracted so much sceptical gloom. One need not be an expert on the early Church to feel sure that when St Jerome first shyly mentioned the idea of translating the Bible to his chums, there was a sagacious wagging of beards and shuffling of sandals in the dust. Slow-footed Latin couldn’t possibly accommodate the quicksilver Greek, and as for those Aramaic idioms… doomed to failure, old boy. The cynics have been at it ever since. “Traduttore, traditore”—the translator is a traitor, Italians merrily quip. “Translations can be either accurate or beautiful”, we are warned, “but never both”. Such witticisms have acquired gravitas from speculative psychology. It is now all a matter of sublimated plagiarism, the expression of an impulse rooted in infantile compulsions—the urge to imitate, the pleasures of lying, and simple greed. Where translation into English is concerned, this greed takes the form of latter-day imperialism, the dominant world language appropriating the wealth of smaller nations the way its statesmen once carved up Africa. Why else should it aspire to read as if originally written in English? Consider the case of Joseph Brodsky.[...]

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