Translators: Traitors or Traders\ulcorner

This paper argues that (1) word-for-word literary translation is not possible; all it does is achieve what Chukovsky characterized as 'imprecise precision' (1984:47), (2) contra to Nida (1969) and others, translation does not just mean translating meaning, and (3) therefore, a translator must negotiate an uneasy but inevitable compromise between accuracy and elegance. To make the translated passage just as pleasing, moving, and cathartic as the original passage as much as possible, a great deal of literary skill is required on the part of the translator. The iniquity of translators is not so much infidelity as infertility to produce an offspring worthy of an heir to the original writer. Translators are not traitors; they are traders, or literary merchants, who trade one form of linguistic unit for another, often meaning for form, or sense for sound, but sometimes form for meaning. A translator then is not a man of treason but is a tradesman.