Translation is a form of passive aggression. In doing it, a writer chooses to forgo original authorship so as to play havoc with a foreign original in a process of imitation, zigzagging between the foreign and receiving languages but in the last analysis cancelling the first in favor of the second.
Interpretation
Translation alters the original text and can undermine the author's intent.
In this quote, Lawrence Venuti reflects on the complex nature of translation, suggesting that it is not merely a transfer of words from one language to another but rather a transformation that can lead to a distortion of the original author's ideas and voice. He warns that through the act of translating, the translator may assert their own authority, ultimately overshadowing the original work and its cultural nuances.
In practice
In a lecture on the impact of translation, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of preserving the original voice of authors.
Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing an act of ethnocentric violence by uprooting the text from the language and culture that gave it life. Translating into current, standard English at once conceals that violence and homogenizes foreign cultures.
Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.
Couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature.
I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.
I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.
I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least.
Played percussively, the piano is a bore. If I go to a concert and someone plays like that I have two choices: go home or go to sleep. The goal is to make the piano sing, sing, sing.
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