Out of the Wings

Posts Tagged ‘literal translation’

‘Never mind what it means; None of those sounds exists in English’

24 November 2008

NPR interviews three translators, providing an insight into the particular challenges faced by the translator of drama and poetry. From the interview:

Bea Basso, who came from Italy to the United States in 2000 to study and work in theater, has done a lot of translating from Italian to English. She says that the choice of a single word can determine the arc of an entire work.

“There is no such thing as a literal translation, by nature of choosing one word or another, you influence the next step,” she says.

Read or hear the interview on the NPR site here: The Art of Translation

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