Alexander Fraser Tytler

If the order in which I have classed the three general laws of translation be their just and natural arrangement, which I think will hardly be denied, it will follow, that in all cases where a sacrifice is necessary to be made of one of …

We may certainly, from the foregoing observations, conclude, that is impossible to do complete justice to any species of poetical compositin in a prose translation; in other words, that none but a poet can translate a poet.

The English language is not incapable of an elliptical mode of expression; but it does not admit of it to the same degree as the Latin.

The Greek language, from the frequency and familiarity of ellipsis, allows a conciseness of expression which is scarcely attainable in any other tongue, and perhaps least of all in the English. ... The Latin language, too, though in an …

In Latin two negatives make an affirmative; but it is otherwise in Greek, they only give force to the negation ...

Next in importance to a faithful transfusion of the sense and meaning of an author, is an assimilation of the style and manner of writing in the translation to that of the original.

But if authors, even of taste and genius, be found at times to have made an injudicious use of that liberty which is allowed in the translation of poetry, we must expect to see it miserably abused indeed, where those talents are evidently …

It is always a fault when the translator adds to the sentiment of the original author, what does not strictly accord with his characteristic mode of thinking, or expressing himself.

Works which consist of fact and detail demand a more scrupulous fidelity than those of which the basis is sentiment.

An ordinary translator sinks under the energy of his original: the man of genius frequently rises above it.

I. ... the Translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work. II. ... the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original. III. ... the Translation should have all the …

The utility of translations is universally felt, and therefore there is a continual demand for them. But this very circumstance has thrown the practice of translation into mean and mercenary hands.