“The best translations into English do not, in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture’s patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language’s rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another people’s gestures and movements.”
— Ken Liu, Translator’s Postface to The Three Body Problem (via as-if-falling)
I love this. It goes straight to the heart of language and highlights why so much translation is so poor.
Hat-tip to Je t’aime / N’arrete pas.
Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash
