Liberty and Hierarchies of Constraints: Explaining Why Translating into One’s L1 is So Much Easier

• In Event: Liberating Translation III: Translating Liberty, Liberty in Translation

Abstract

This paper attempts to explain why translation into one’s L1 is generally easier than out of it. This is a topic that is usually addressed at the early stages of translation apprenticeship but then left as “obvious” at later stages. The paper employs the notion of a hierarchy of constraints, from expressing one’s “own” ideas to the translation of a highly structured (formally constrained) poem by someone else, with a half-dozen stops in between and examples drawn from a variety of source languages and genres.

Author

• Russell Scott Valentino, Indiana U Bloomington