Translator Lily Meyer writes about her process for Bright Wall/Dark Room (archived):
Not too long ago, I spoke to a writer acquaintance who is learning to translate. He was worried about a sentence that, as he put it, did not want to go from French to English. All his translations of it either changed the original’s meaning or were too ugly to tolerate. He was looking for permission to change the meaning. I gave it to him. I’d like to say I helped him give it to himself, but the truth is that I just told him to change it. Afterward, though, I walked him through the thought process to which I return every time I decide, as I often do, that a scrupulously or fundamentally correct translation of meaning is hideous, clunky, or in some other way unacceptable, and cannot remain in the English text I am creating.
My process has four parts, three of which I shared. […] First, I remind myself that my intentions toward the project I am translating are fundamentally good. I respect it and want to share it; I understand it; I want my translation to do the work and its author justice. Second, I remind myself—I wish this one were no longer necessary, for me or for anyone else—that translation is an art, and I am, therefore, an artist. My aesthetic judgment matters. Bearing those ideas in mind, I then test myself for literary bias. Do I dislike the sentence at hand because it is too far from the conventions of contemporary English-language prose? Does it make me itchy because it wouldn’t fly in a workshop, or because it might freak a publisher out? If the answer is yes, or could be yes, or if I have the slightest doubt that the answer might not be no, the sentence stays, to be revisited down the line. If I feel in my bones that the answer is no, it goes.
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