A Log Cabin Out of Stone: - Dartmouth College

This is not to say that the task of translation is impossible, only that a good
translation is not simple or obvious. Translating, like textual criticism, involves a great
deal of analysis. We must first understand the voice of the poet, the ideas behind the
poetry, the language, the methods, the meter employed by the poet. As Housman explains,
we are in no position to be able to fully grasp the Roman poet, so this task is never fully
realized. We can only translate as ourselves; we cannot hope truly to translate as a voice
of the original author.
The Myth of Objectivity
Simply in reading the text, any text, we have already brought so much analysis to
it. With respect to reading and analysis, Wolfgang Iser describes an “entanglement”
through which the “reader is bound to open himself up to the workings of the text and so
leave behind his own preconceptions.” Iser then quotes George Bernard Shaw who said
“You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.” Iser
explains the loss in reading “reflects the structure of the experience to the extent that we
must suspend the ideas and attitudes that shape our own personality before we can
experience the unfamiliar world of literary text. But during this process, something
happens to us.” 13 Our lives and our experiences inform our comprehension of literature.
It is not possible to read objectively and therefore not possible to receive a text
objectively.
No two people can really read the text the same way, and since translating first
involves reading and understanding, no two translations of the same text will ever be
13 Iser, Wolfgang “The Reading Process: a Phenomenonolgical Approach” In Reader Response Criticism
Ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1980), 65.
13