Translation is not a mechanical operation. It is an act of interpretation. When a translator moves a text from one language to another, they are not simply replacing words with their equivalents. They are making a series of judgments about meaning, tone, register, and the extent to which a reader in the target language shares the cultural assumptions of the original. A word that carries centuries of resonance in one culture may arrive in another as a sound with no echo. The German word Schadenfreude — the pleasure taken in another's misfortune — has no single English equivalent precisely because it names an experience that English speakers, perhaps choosing not to admit to it openly, did not find it necessary to name.
Some things cannot be translated without loss, and translators must decide what to sacrifice. A translator who prioritises literal fidelity may produce a text that is accurate to the letter but alien in feel. One who prioritises the reader's experience may produce something readable but unfaithful to the original. The Italian phrase 'traduttore, traditore' — 'translator, traitor' — captures this dilemma with cruel precision: every choice to make a text accessible involves a choice to betray the original in some degree.
And yet translation is the condition for most of what we know. Without it, the Iliad would remain inaccessible to those who do not read ancient Greek. The works of Tolstoy, Kafka, and Proust would be confined to their original languages. Whatever is lost in translation, more is lost without it.
