Hoffer, P.T. (2000). Translator's Note to the Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi Volume 3, 1920-1933. The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi Volume 3, 1920-1933, vii-viii Translator's Note to the Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi Volume 3, 1920-1933 All Translations Require a compromise between a desire to retain the literal meaning and stylistic peculiarities of the original and the need to render it in acceptable, idiomatic English. Translations that are too literal are often cumbersome or stilted, whereas those that attempt to follow the norms of colloquial English run the risk of losing or distorting some essential meaning. In translating the letters of Freud and Ferenczi, an attempt has been made to retain, to the fullest extent possible, the style and meaning of the original. This entailed having to render many of Freud's idiosyncratic and imaginative metaphorical constructions in forms that have no exact English equivalent while retaining the otherwise precise yet uniquely intimate conversational tone of his epistolary prose style. In the case of Ferenczi, whose native tongue was Hungarian and whose German was flawed, obvious grammatical and stylistic errors have been silently corrected. But at the same time an effort [This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.] |
