The job of a translator is both difficult and one of great responsibility. An author can be utterly misrepresented in a language that is not his own: David Magarshack, for example, who translated Chekhov’s plays, argued that the entire Western approach to Chekhov was grossly mistaken and based solely on mistranslations that, especially in English, falsely emphasized the melancholy aspect of his work.
Continue reading the entire piece here at First Things
______________________
Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor of City Journal and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Photo by Jewish Chronicle/Heritage Images/Getty Images
