Translation is such a strange, frustrating and interesting craft. It is perpetual compromise. One compromises exactitude of meaning for comparability of meaning, for instance. As an example of the necessity of making such compromises, consider the question: does one choose to translate the word “miles” in English into the word “kilómetros” in Spanish? “Why would you?” you might ask. Because to human beings who live, day to day, using their familiar words and concepts, the real correspondent to the English speaker’s “miles” is “kilómetros”: “millas”, the Spanish word for the unit of measure called in English “miles”, sounds foreign to Spanish speakers and does not sound like a day to day unit of measurement.
The general problem is simple: if one is faithful to the exact words one translates, their interrelations and connotations are lost; if one is faithful to their interrelations and connotations, the exact meanings are lost. Of course, the debate is entertaining to some of us who take a strange pleasure in knowing that one never gets a rest from perpetually having to ask what is the real meaning of similarity, of analogy and of equivalence. The continual resurgence of these questions, like the surging of water from a fountain, is what makes translation such a profound and philosophical task.