Umberto Eco called translation “the art of failure,” after all, did he not? And fail we must, with every syllable, insofar as the fact that we are changing it all means, you know, that we are changing it — but far better one great actor’s interpretation of Hamlet than never to see it performed even a single astonishing, imperfect time.
—Daniel Hahn (Catching Fire: A Translation Diary)
It is not always a lack of culture that lets down modern translations. Many translators work in material conditions which condemn them to producing poor drudgework, however competent and gifted they may in fact be. It is very hard to produce satisfactory literary translations while trying to live from them. A good translation is at one and the same time a labour of love and a luxury good. To translate is to pursue a passion (at times a costly one!); it rarely becomes a profitable activity.
—Simon Leys (The Hall of Uselessness)
The difficulty remains: to read different translations of Proust, of War and Peace, of Cervantes, rather than not read them at all. But why read translations when the original is not Proust, not a masterpiece? I think of this a lot. Unless, on those rare occasions, the translation is superior to the original (as has been claimed of Moncrieff’s Proust and Baudelaire’s Poe).