A few days ago, I asked a private Facebook literary translation group whether it is possible to be a good translator and a poor writer. How do translations fail (other than misunderstanding the original language)?
My post provoked a couple dozen comments, many of which agreed with Daleth who said, "No. A translator IS a writer. A translator who is a bad writer is also, by definition, a bad translator. Just because you can accurately convey the meaning of a text, that doesn't mean you're a good translator." Rachel said, "If I say (as I do) that a good translator has to be a good writer, I mean that they have to be good at putting words together in their own language."
Kevan expanded on that: "A bad writer cannot be a good translator. They may be able to fully understand the source text and produce a faithful translation, but will that final product be good writing unto itself? No. There are numerous, sometimes countless, ways to render a thought into a language, and the talent and skill of the translator in writing his/her mother tongue will guide those choices. A talented translator will give us natural, elegant prose worthy of being called literature. A poor writer who translates will give us clunky, inelegant, tone-deaf prose, that while grammatical and conveying the meaning of the source text, will be unpleasant to read."
Silvia wrote: "You have to be a good writer, otherwise it is a literal translation that fails to capture cultural elements and metaphorical meanings."
My own suspicion is that the ability to translate is one skill and the ability to write clear, fluent English is another. Some of those who commented define "good translator" as someone who writes clear (appropriate? accurate) English. But I think that begs the question. Certainly the opposite is true: Someone can be a fine writer in English and be a terrible translator.
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