Translation is impossible

You would be forgiven for asking whether this is a wise title for an article in praise of translation but I urge you to read on.

The notion of translation being impossible is a popular one in the field and you might be surprised to hear that it is translators themselves who have historically held the issue up for debate. Unorthodox though it may seem to claim that the professional task you perform is in fact unachievable, it is the notion of "impossibility" that allows us to appreciate the art of the translator.

The foundation of the debate is the concept of "equivalence" in translation, the idea that a sentence in one language has no direct equivalent in another. The concept of strict equivalence, you might say, is a kind of Holy Grail for the translator, and I am sure that the vast majority of translators would echo me in saying that it is the very challenge of finding a way to transfer the message of the source language into the target language that they cherish.

The cultural and linguistic differences between the audience of the original text and the audience of the translation can throw up a wide array of challenges and it is the translator's task to use their cultural and linguistic expertise to find the best solution possible.

A professional translator will step back from this theoretical debate or risk a sense of perpetual failure; the arguments are, after all, applied to translation in the very purest sense and it is only this goal of "equivalence" which is theoretically impossible. All professions have an ideal to work towards, a kind of shooting for the moon and landing in the stars approach, for translators this is total equivalence.

I don't, of course, wish to convince you of the "impossibility" of translation and I hope you'll join me in appreciation of the translator's task. Translation is theoretically impossible because of the intricate differences between languages and cultures, but it is these very differences which necessitate the translator's role. If languages were homogenous then translators would have been successfully replaced by machine translation by now.

Having opened this theoretical can of worms, I will attempt to close it by drawing on the other side of this debate; translation is 'impossible" but necessary. This is, of course, a vital element of the debate but it would be indulgent of me to pause here any longer as I know I needn't convince the reader of that!

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