Holly Gayley and Roger Jackson begin the discussion session with some provocations and a quote:

“Had translation depended for its survival on theory, it would have died out long before Cicero. Yet its practice has always assumed principle, the professional conscience of 2,000 years being summed up in Roman Jakobson’s ‘translator of what messages? betrayer of what values?’” – L.G. Kelly, The True Interpreter.

What makes for a good translation?
What are the translations you like to read and why?
What are the kinds of translations you like to create and why?

“Up to a point, each translation is a creation and thus constitutes a unique text…I do not mean to imply that literal translation is impossible; what I am saying is that it is not translation. It is a mechanism, a string of words that helps us read the text in its original language. It is a glossary rather than a translation, which is always a literary activity. Without exception, even when the translator’s sole intention is to convey meaning, as in the case of scientific texts, translation implies a transformation of the original. That transformation is not – nor can it be – anything but literary…” – Octavio Paz, “Translation: Literature and Letters.”