Steiner and Bellos

 

Steiner mentions how translators can often fall down the slippery slope of finding actual meaning in the author’s text versus finding that “anything” or almost anything” can mean everything”. It reminds me of how in high school, students and professors who analyze text can find any sort of meaning in something that the author probably wrote about that did not actually have any meaning. Steiner uses words that seem to imply that the translator leaves damage to the original text in order to extract treasure from it. For instance, Steiner states, “the translator invades, extracts, and brings home.” However, he said that this happens only with false translation or is actually illusory. I also think it is interesting that Steiner mentions how sometimes the translation becomes more popular and replaces the original text. 

In Bellos’ essay, I really enjoyed reading about the struggle between making the translation sound completely fluent or if they should add any foreign touch to the translation. I definitely believe that there would be no harm in incorporating common phrases that most people knew into translations and would increase interest in the language being mentioned. However, there is a thin line between respecting the culture and language and using stereotypes and satirizing them which would risk hurting certain people and audiences. 

 

Moeka