Translators favor readable English over literal fidelity while refusing simplification

Evidence

Any translation always involves a balance between a literal rendition of the original and producing something which both reads well in the target language and at the same time conveys the ideas and intentions of the author. We took the early decision that our prime task was to publish a text that was readily understandable by English-speaking readers, even if that meant failing to give every German word its literal translation. Even so, these two books present as formidable a challenge to readers in English as they do in German, and there is nothing that translators can or should do to reduce that challenge by trying to simplify the text. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 78

Categorization

• XREF: Direct methodological caveat for the reader’s project: any quoted Luhmann passages are already twice-removed through translation choices, which matters when building a precise theoretical comparison. — connects to: English speakers judged existentialism for decades with almost no translations available — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 553; Translation loss is inevitable and driven by the translator’s preconceptions — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2194; Translated non-Western writing is absorbed through a single representative voice — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 377