the fine art of translation

Language hat recently posted about towards a foreign likeness bent: translation, an e-book with 15 essays about translation. Reading something like this really brings home what a huge difference a different translation can bring to the enjoyment and interpretation of a text.

Speaking as a Montrealer, and generally, I feel that not nearly enough attention is paid to good translation. A good translator has to be a good writer in their own language - at least as good as the writer in the original language, who is probably fairly good if they’re getting translated.

Perhaps the art is valued more elsewhere, but here at least, where almost everyone is (or claims to be) bilingual. Translation of English documents into French is still a priority, but translating French into English - well, Mike down in shipping speaks good English, he can do it…I wonder if there’s some kind of correlation between high levels of bilingualism and crappy translation - there’s probably a thesis in that somewhere.