I’ve come to realize that translation is never simply about swapping words from one language to another.

The true difficulty lies in deciding whether to translate at all, how to pivot the angle, and most importantly what must be left in the white space.

I remember watching a simultaneous interpreter once. The speaker told a deeply local joke, and the room erupted in laughter. The interpreter’s version was linguistically flawless, yet the atmosphere instantly froze. The humor wasn't in the sentence; it was hidden in the culture, in the shared lived experience. If you haven't lived that scene, a literal translation merely disassembles humor into a pile of cold, lifeless parts.

I’ve also seen scholarly pedants who possess a profound love for ancient texts and poetry. Yet, watching their translations often makes me anxious for them. It’s not that they don’t understand the words; it’s that they are so loyal to the literal meaning that they forget words only live within a context.

Once translation is reduced to mere "accuracy," it easily loses its "truth."

I gradually understood: translation is a projection of one’s capacity to perceive. Language isn’t an isolated entity; it drags an invisible web behind it. Within that web lie the places we’ve been, the diverse conversations we’ve had, the moments we chose silence, and the moments we were forced to speak.

🕸️ The thicker the web, the more grounded the translator's judgment. Translation isn’t a display of skill, but an act of discernment and sacrifice.

Some things, once explained, lose their essence. Some meanings must be turned at an angle before they can touch the ground. A truly great translation sometimes chooses to ignore the sentence itself to translate the entire "atmosphere."

Therefore, translation is never a task between languages; it is a coordination of different domains through one’s cognitive depth.

Only when we learn how to leave an "escape route" for a sentence do we truly begin to understand translation.

The ceiling of translation has never been about the size of one’s vocabulary, but about how many contexts one has truly inhabited.



—— 🎐 XC Scribbles · 壹佰參拾捌 CXXXVIII 🕸️