Schliermacher is correct in his statement that we cannot assume how someone speaking in one language would speak in another. However, I don't think equivalencies in translation are so focused on imagining Romans as Germans. I think the focal point of translation is on making the text read in a way that someone in the other language can understand it, making it approachable to a new audience, not necessarily re-imagining it in this way. In his article, he leans more towards accomodating the author in a way, and translating more literally. While this would stay true to the literal aspects of a text, it would do very little in working as a translation beyond the word level.
I think total accomodation to the reader, though, isn't as severe as Schliermacher thought it was. As we see in Deutscher's article, people are able to grasp more than the limitations of their language may imply.
I think Deutscher makes a lot of very important points about how we use and understand language. I love the point about what languages have to include and what they can include. People assume Japanese is very vague, when in reality it just has different types of mandatory information. English relies more on relative pronouns, while Japanese does not. Languages do not establish limits in understanding, but they do affect our ways of thinking and understanding information and signals. This is exactly why language is so important.
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