The “prison of language is only temporary…someday a merciful
guard – the perfect translator – will come along with his keys
and let us out,” Wendy Lesser wrote in an article, “The
Mysteries of Translation,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education
in 2002. The following questions remain, however: Who is this
translator? What does he do? And what skills should he possess?
Simply put, a translator is a person who recreates a text in
another language, attempting to keep a delicate balance between
being so literal that the text sounds awkward and unnatural in
the new language or being so free that the text has become
virtually unrecognizable. A translator has to not only translate
the words, but also the concepts. In other words, a translator
unlocks the prison of language, as Ms. Lesser said, and helps a
text break free of its limited original language, culture, and
audience. This service is an unfortunately under-appreciated art
and craft. To do all the above, a translator must have the
following things: a native or near-native level of proficiency
in both the source language (the language to be translated from)
and the target language (the language to be translated to); the
ability to thoroughly understand all that a text says and
implies; and excellent writing and editing skills. Ideally, the
translator would also have a lot of knowledge about both the
source and target language cultures, as this affects word usage
and meaning, as well as about the author of the original
document and his style of writing. It all sounds rather
formidable, certainly, but not impossible. There are, in fact,
many excellent practitioners out there who fulfill these hefty
requirements, but the tiny number of translated books published
in the United States each year reveals the sad fact that few
people take up this challenging and stimulating work. If only
more people would join the ranks of translators and help unlock
the prison of language.
© Copyright 2004 Brett Jocelyn Epstein. All rights reserved.
Article reprint permission is granted as long as the the entire
article, including the author biography, remains complete and
unchanged. Please send a courtesy copy of the reprint to
bjepstein@gmail.com.
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