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A good translator, it is often said, should be bicultural as well as bilingual. He or she should have a high degree of cultural and linguistic knowledge in each language that enables them to recognise, interpret and convey nuance and allusion. Where literary translation is concerned, then, they will be expected to convey not only the meaning of the text, but the sense of it also. Etymologically, to translate is to "carry over"; however, this raises the question of what is carried over. And, then, of what remains. Because even if one believes that a translator should aspire to these holistic heights, something does always remain.¹ The claims of untranslatability upon saudade, lítost and hüzün, whether explicit or implicit, all allude to a complex and privileged experience of emotion and history in which, even if the meaning of the word could be fully carried over, a truly meaningful understanding of it could not. Only from a deep emotional as well as collective historical experience, they suggest, would one even begin to comprehend what is at stake. Since it defies redefinition by others, a claim of untranslatability is always intended to be a declaration of cultural integrity.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137403483_2

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