Translation is in the mind of the general public associated with rendering into extremely scraggly English the “Commentaries” of Cæsar or the “Æneid” of Virgil. Most of us have been through experiences like that of Betty in “A Woodland Wooing:”—
“Just listen to this stuff. I’ve got the rest of it, but I can’t make head or tail out of this.”
“Well, what is it?” demanded Bob.
“‘Him likewise perchance furious alike impelling, and the spoils of the Ægean deity whatsoever by means of madness notwithstanding to be about to be sacrificed.’ There, that is the very best I can make out of it.”
“Well,” returned Bob, with brotherly candor, “you are a muff. That’s plain enough. Don’t you see: ‘He also declared himself about to be sacrificed, an offering to the insatiate Ægean deity; not caring to live, moreover, impelled by furious madness, but ready alike to finish and be forgotten.’ That is as easy as rolling off a log.”—Ch. iii.
This idea, however, it is needful to lay aside if the subject is to be discussed intelligibly, for Translation has come to be treated as a serious matter, and to be developed like any other intellectual pursuit.
The first fact to be accepted in considering Translation is that it is impossible exactly to render into one language what has been written in another. The race that has made each tongue has impressed its own character upon it in every syllable, in every idiom. It is not difficult to repeat in one speech the general idea of what is said in another, and for practical purposes this is often all that is required. The directions for making a machine, the particulars of a shipment of grain, the questions one asks in shopping may with no especial difficulty be changed from language to language. When it comes to thoughts, and still more when emotions are to be dealt with, it is impossible to give in two tongues precisely the same shade of meaning. The delicate aroma of a piece of literary art is as surely diminished or lost in translation as a man becomes a foreigner and noticeably strange when removed from his own country to another. Even in practical affairs this is sometimes a serious consideration. The meaning in different languages of the phrases most nearly equivalent is so far from being identical that in important treaties between nations of differing speech it is necessary to agree beforehand what tongue shall be considered authoritative in case of dispute. In scientific books it is common to find that a translator is forced to add the original to his version of some sentence or phrase because there is no exact equivalent. Words cannot completely express thought in any case, and to this constant infirmity of language is in translation added the difficulty that the words of one tongue cannot accurately represent the precise shade of idea phrased by another.
Professor Wendell remarks:—
Each language names ideas in a way peculiarly its own. The common agreement on arbitrary symbols that at length results in the vocabulary of any language is sure to produce symbols that stand for peculiar aspects of real thoughts and emotions which language tries to define,—for aspects in other words which differ from those named by any other tongue; and what is thus plainly true of words by themselves is just as true of words in combination…. In its vocabulary, in its grammar, in its entirety, each language must express the lasting meaning of life in aspects different from those expressed by any other.—Stelligeri, p. 103.