Translation’s Drift

Translations that show the jamming—that are self-evidently translations—may be especially generative. In seeking to be both accurate and majestic, the creators of the King James Bible ended up conjuring all sorts of strange idioms that are now utterly familiar (a thorn in the flesh, know for a certainty, the root of the matter, turn the world upside down). Some theorists of translation even think that there’s an ethical imperative to signal the strain. Kwame Anthony Appiah, The New York Review of Books

 recensione a due nuovi libri sulla traduzione: The Philosophy of Translation, di Damion Searls (Yale University Press), e Speaking in Tongues, di J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos (Liveright).