#translation notebook

[absentsun]

Anne Michaels said reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil and that was when I decided I'd become fluent in as many languages as possible. thank you for coming to my ted talk

[notatwar]

Translation is far removed from being the deaf, inert equation of two dead tongues. Translation is, among all communicative modes, the one most concerned to mark the ripening process in a foreign language and the pulse of changing life in its own.

Benjamin, Walter."The Task of the Translator," trans. James Hynd and E. M. Valk, 1968. Translation—Theory and Practice: a historical reader, ed. Weissbort and Eystensson, 301.

[notatwar]

For just as in the course of the centuries the tone and meaning of the great literary works are completely transformed, so too is the translator's native language. Indeed, while the writer's words survive in his own language, even the greatest translation is destined to diminish through the growth of the translator's language and to be lost in its renewed life.

Benjamin, Walter."The Task of the Translator," trans. James Hynd and E. M. Valk, 1968. Translation—Theory and Practice: a historical reader, ed. Weissbort and Eystensson, 301.