Unnecessary Language

 

I wrote yesterday about ‘Language’, meaning rude words, swearing, etc. This opens a very large can of worms and I hope to write more on the subject in the next few days.

I have sometimes worked as an external examiner, marking literary translations from English to Greek made by students taking an MA in literary translation. One student submitted her translation from American to Greek of a script by Quentin Tarantino. In her footnotes she explained that she had removed all the ‘Bad language’ as it was ‘Unnecessary’.

In Tarantino’s work swearing is of course not only necessary, it is essential; indeed if you took out all the ‘bad language’ there wouldn’t be much left. Besides, ‘faithfulness’ — whatever that is taken to mean — is the first duty of a translator; it is no part of her job to impose her prudish opinions on the work she is translating.

I gave her a very low mark.