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Originally Posted by porkmarras
Good ones surely understand that words are more than mere things that come out of a person's mouth? Like an entire psychological apparatus that has its roots and its life within a human being or an artist's life experience for instance.
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Which is precisely why a translation is, even at its best, doing a disservice to original.
The best writing takes pains to develop its own vocabulary, its own vernacular, its own textual cadence, its own VOICE. Faulkner, for example, employs stream of consciousness, and that, in conjunction with his typically Southern dialect, defines him as a writer, and imbues his tales with individualism. How can you translate Vardaman's nonsensical spewings of guilt, Jewel's stoicism, Dewey Dell's pathetic ignorance? One can create a linguistic reproduction, but such will serve only as informational, and is simply incapable of embodying the original in concentrate.
Some translations are poor, and some are exceptional; regardless, a translation simply, as the movie title so aptly states, loses something in the process.