Translation and Taste

Translation suggests that there are many ways of being good—but no sure method. A sentence in a foreign language can be translated successfully into our own by a number of different English sentences, none of which will replicate the original’s literal meaning, play of sound, or range of connotations. The number and variety of possible “good” translations, and the impossibility of making any singular perfect translation, may make us suspicious about ever placing a definite article “the” in front of “good.” Translation can be the beginning of a moral education by which we are awakened to the undeniable reality of goodness (there really is something good in good translations) and to the strangely multiple, perhaps irreconcilably diverse, forms in which goodness appears.