An Italian pun notes that traduttore, traditore: to translate is to betray.
One of the great joys and frustrations of reading ancient texts—or more recent ones in languages I can’t read—is seeing all the differences in the translations, all the various interpretations of the original.
For example, right now I’m reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and I’m comparing three different recent translations and a couple of others in the public domain. The differences are sometimes minimal (“dwelling” vs. “home”), sometimes significant (“heard” vs. “told”), and sometimes hilarious (“he snooded his locks”).
It all reminds me how amazing a thing it is that we can translate anything at all, that somehow language allows us to share thoughts that are roughly the same—but never quite exactly so. The very fact of misunderstanding, of misinterpretation, highlights the wonder of understanding itself.
There are few greater delights than reading a confusing passage, one that is confusing in every translation, but that attains a kind of clarity when reading them all together. It’s like the parable of the elephant as described by the various blind people: each has a piece of the whole, and only together can they discover what it is they’re encountering. Likewise, when the perspectives of the various translators congeal into a whole, insight blossoms in the mind like fireworks, and the joy of understanding fills the heart.
This is the joy of connecting with another human being. Even if that other is long dead, from a culture with radically different assumptions about the world and reality itself, communicating in a language not spoken in a millennium—even then, a connection is possible, however limited or small it may be.
But it all begins with the recognition that I don’t understand, not completely, not perfectly. It starts with the willingness to hear something I don’t expect, that might not make sense at first, and to trust that somewhere behind all the confusion and strangeness and frustration there is a mind like my own, reaching out to me, and trusting that I will not betray it.