I have no background in the ethics of translation, but it seems to me that the question can't be addressed sensibly without asking a further question. Namely, what's the translation for?
If it intends to recreate the original as far as possible, for an audience that has no meaningful access to that original, the translator will still need to decide what's at the center of the work, and what aspects of the original should have priority when she hits points where it isn't possible to render everything she sees in the original with perfect accuracy. There are going to be problematic aspects no matter what, and as long as the translator's intent is not to do violence to the original work, to hide it or to misrepresent it or to replace it, I'm not sure I'm seeing an ethical dilemma.
Or at least, not one that couldn't be dealt with adequately by full disclosure by the translator. As long as a reader knows what your goals are, and what aspects of the original were necessarily left behind or distorted by the change from one language to another, filtered through a mind from a different place and time from that of the original writer -- well, why not? No translation will ever be perfectly faithful to the original, after all. And if your goal is to make a work of art available to a wider audience, rather than to make a source available to a scholarly community, I'm not sure that issues about whether it's fair to make something badly-written into something less badly written are even relevant. At least, not in the absence of any attempt to mislead a reader.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-05-13 01:45 am (UTC)If it intends to recreate the original as far as possible, for an audience that has no meaningful access to that original, the translator will still need to decide what's at the center of the work, and what aspects of the original should have priority when she hits points where it isn't possible to render everything she sees in the original with perfect accuracy. There are going to be problematic aspects no matter what, and as long as the translator's intent is not to do violence to the original work, to hide it or to misrepresent it or to replace it, I'm not sure I'm seeing an ethical dilemma.
Or at least, not one that couldn't be dealt with adequately by full disclosure by the translator. As long as a reader knows what your goals are, and what aspects of the original were necessarily left behind or distorted by the change from one language to another, filtered through a mind from a different place and time from that of the original writer -- well, why not? No translation will ever be perfectly faithful to the original, after all. And if your goal is to make a work of art available to a wider audience, rather than to make a source available to a scholarly community, I'm not sure that issues about whether it's fair to make something badly-written into something less badly written are even relevant. At least, not in the absence of any attempt to mislead a reader.