10 quotes
An ordinary translator sinks under the energy of his original: the man of genius frequently rises above it.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
Works which consist of fact and detail demand a more scrupulous fidelity than those of which the basis is sentiment.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
The utility of translations is universally felt, and therefore there is a continual demand for them. But this very circumstance has thrown the practice of translation into mean and mercenary hands.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
In Latin two negatives make an affirmative; but it is otherwise in Greek, they only give force to the negation ...
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
It is always a fault when the translator adds to the sentiment of the original author, what does not strictly accord with his characteristic mode of thinking, or expressing himself.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
The English language is not incapable of an elliptical mode of expression; but it does not admit of it to the same degree as the Latin.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
Next in importance to a faithful transfusion of the sense and meaning of an author, is an assimilation of the style and manner of writing in the translation to that of the original.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
We may certainly, from the foregoing observations, conclude, that is impossible to do complete justice to any species of poetical compositin in a prose translation; in other words, that none but a poet can translate a poet.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
But if authors, even of taste and genius, be found at times to have made an injudicious use of that liberty which is allowed in the translation of poetry, we must expect to see it miserably abused indeed, where those talents are evidently wanting.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)
If the order in which I have classed the three general laws of translation be their just and natural arrangement, which I think will hardly be denied, it will follow, that in all cases where a sacrifice is necessary to be made of one of those laws to another, a due regard ought to be paid to their rank and comparative importance.
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791)