To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally. In learning to read well, scholarship, valuable as it is, is less important than instinct; some great scholars have been poor translators.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
To read is to translate
via "Reading: An essay" by W.H. Auden
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment