I think Steiner’s view on trust in translation is very interesting. He claims that the translator trusting that there exists some meaning that can be translated is a “radical act of generosity.” It seems to be such a fundamental assumption that it is hard to conceive of it being false, since after all, languages exist to allow people to express and communicate their thoughts, to give form to meaning. As such, I think bringing up this point as the essential first step in the process of translation definitely gives for some fascinating food for thougt.
Bellos’ article on machine translation was also a good read, and I do definitely agree with his take that machine translation cannot handle literary translation well, nor is it reasonable to expect it to. As he says, machine translation cannot (and likely will not any time soon) take into account the real-world context of an utterance or, in this case, a work of literature; yet no literature exists in a vacuum, so I think it would be quite impossible to produce an adequate translation without at least some knowledge of the world in which it was written and the experiences of the author.
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