Just as you can not translate anything between two languages, nothing is untranslatable once you realize that nothing is translatable. A translation of literary work is never the same work, but a new work related to the former – the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher (1763-1834) said that an artist could view a translation of his works by imagining what his child would look like, had his wife had it with another man […] But seeing as the final outcome – the translation – is only a relative of the original work, it should not really matter whether it is a first or second cousin.
Den islandske digter Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl i prologen til sin antologi over eksperimenterende digte i islandsk oversættelse, 131.839 slög með bilum. Den fulde tekst kan ses på her på nypoesi.net.
