Schleiermacher and Deutscher Comments

 In the Schleiermacher reading, the author asserts that the role of a translator is to allow a foreign reader to understand texts originally written in different languages. However, Schliermacher argues that a translator must make a crucial decision in the strategy behind their translations; the translator must decide whether they aim to reshape the text to fit a foreign reader's understanding, or to preserve the text as much as possible and bring the reader to a new understanding. I wholeheartedly agree with this assertion. Readers are accustomed to literature written by people with similar culture background to their own. As such, reading a direct word-for-word translation of a foreign text can often leave people confused. Before taking this class, I would have believed that a direct translation of any text should be adequate for any reader to take on. Now, I have since grown to understand that sentences which hinge on the reader's background information pertaining to specific cultural references must be either cut down or sized up in order to unite the reader with the author's original intention. Balancing the line between preserving the author's original thoughts and cutting texts down as to not confuse the reader is a delicate one, but one that produces vastly different results depending on the route chosen by a translator. 

The Deutscher article was incredibly interesting. When I was younger, I read numerous articles on how language influenced one's perception of color. The case study was centered on a remote African tribe. Their language didn't have a word for blue, but it did have over 20 different words for green. The results of the study showed that the tribe's perception of blue versus green was much less acute than people whose mother tongue distinguished blue and green. However, the tribe was able to distinguish between shades of green which would be perceived as identical by the average American. After having read this study, I have often pondered whether language is a tool of limitless potential, or one of limitations. Deutscher's article provided many examples of how one's mother tongue can influence the way they see the world and process information around them, and those thought-provoking examples have allowed me to appreciate the value (and difficulty) of translating between languages. Translating words individually is easy; translating the experience of reading a given text from one language to another is the true challenge.

Alexa