Translators should prioritize intelligibility without simplifying difficulty
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
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- CANDY: A neat counterintuitive stance for translators: don’t simplify difficulty, but do naturalize punctuation.