At one end, literary translation is a practical necessity, like interpreting: words from a foreign speaker need to be brought into (for the sake of argument) English, so that they may be understood. It is an urgent, interior, invisible and, if things are going well, (in detail) unnoticed activity – like magic or sport or cooking or driving. The translator or interpreter is a conduit. One might talk about a footballer’s “educated left foot” in the same way. You just “shut your eyes and hit it”, and it flies into the top corner, or row Z, or wherever. You get to where you were going. The dish appears on the table. The rabbit wanders from one pocket to another. The volunteer from the audience climbs out of the box, with luck, unsawn in two.At the same time, translation offers great potential for over-thinking. Most of this is not done…
Orixe: TLSTranslation and the dangers of over-thinking – TheTLS