Our first
response to a translation must be, “Yes, this is a good piece of writing.” But
we cannot go on to say, “This is a good translation,” until we have made sure
that it stands in a satisfactory relation to its original.
. . .
What
translation cannot do, except at a primitive level of communication, and what
it is commonly supposed to do, is “give you the original,” provide a means of
access to work in languages that we do not know. . . In poetry, especially
lyric poetry, the proportion of what will not come across increases
vertiginously.
--D. S.
Carne-Ross, “The Two Voices
of Translation”
