What Translation Decides

A translator is often described as a servant of the original, someone whose success is measured by invisibility. That description is flattering and mostly false. Nothing crosses a language untouched, and the interesting question is not whether something was lost but what the translator agreed to lose.

Consider the ordinary difficulties. Sound is the first casualty: a line that rhymes or falls into a rhythm in one language almost never does so in another, and a translator who saves the rhyme usually pays for it with the sense. Politeness is the second. Some languages mark respect in the grammar itself, in verb endings a speaker cannot avoid choosing, while English must carry the same information in word choice or leave it out. The information does not vanish; it moves, or it evaporates.

So a translation is not a copy but a set of decisions, and each version shows its translator's priorities as clearly as it shows the author's. This is why several translations of one book are not redundant. They are different answers to the same problem, and reading two of them tells you something no single version can: where the original was hard.