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On The Virtues Of Not Understanding, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

Because every attempt distorts the original perfect translation is impossible. Is it the cask of the translator to make this impossibility seem to disappear, to produce a text that flows effortlessly in the new language, presenting no problems of understanding, or should the translator somehow find a way to bring the reader to share a sense of the foreignness of what he is reading, and hence this much of the reality of the unknown text, its language, and its world? Several of the authors in this volume raise this issue one way or another, especially Indira Karamcheci, who argues for …