On Translation

In his Taylorian Lecture, Hilaire Belloc argues that translators should “transmute boldly”. They should not ask themselves “How shall I make this foreigner talk English?”, but rather “What would an Englishman have said to ex- press the same?”

“That is translation,” he writes. “That is the very essence of the art: the resurrection of an alien thing in a native body; not the dressing of it up in native clothes but the giving to it of native flesh and blood.”

Belloc’s essay has been out of print since it was first published by the Clarendon Press in 1931.

When you buy a copy of this newly-typeset, digital edition, you will receive both a PDF and an ePub 2 file that can be read on older devices. The latter contains an embedded, default “publisher font” capable of rendering Ancient Greek. The file size is just under 1 MB.