Translation

Every translation is an argument about what matters in a text. When a translator chooses one word over another, they are making a claim about what the original means and what should be preserved in the new language.

This is why great literary works have many translations, and why translators argue about them. The debates are not always about accuracy in a simple sense. Sometimes the most accurate translation of a word is technically wrong, because the word''s connotations in the source language do not align with the most precise equivalent in the target language.

Walter Benjamin wrote that a translation does not merely reproduce a work: it reveals something latent in it that the original language was too close to see. A great translation is, in this sense, a new reading of the original.

I think about this whenever I read a work in translation. I am reading one person''s interpretation of another person''s words. The translator is invisible but everywhere.

Learning even a second language changes how you read translations. You begin to notice the seams. And sometimes, in those seams, you find the most interesting things.