Mark Thornton Burnett: Gaining in Translation

Mark Thornton Burnett, professor of renaissance studies at Queens University, Belfast, on how translation can be both linguistic and cultural.

I suspect that some translators feel compelled to render one language literally onto another, and they may argue that certain situations require such precise rendering.  But I agree with Burnett: Translation is both literal (linguistic) and figurative (cultural).  It is inevitable, I think, that something is lost in translation, but be that as it may, accounting for the tone, meaning and context of the original text and rendering it all for another language or culture is a matter, too, of re-creating or co-creating the original text.  So, in essence, what is lost in a literal translation is (re)gained in a figurative translation.