Multiple Dimensions of Translation

This essay explores several aspects or dimensions of literary translation. First, translation offers pleasure in the reading experience, and for translators, literary translation is a creative or re-creative activity. Sometimes, a translation may become a better work than the original. Second, the ideas of incommensurability and untranslatability are misleading and harmful, and the so-called critique of the “hegemony” of English is not only disingenuous and hypocritical but also prevents non-Western literary works from being translated and known in the world as part of world literature. Finally, with several concrete examples, this essay argues for the importance of cultural understanding in successful translations.