The Art of Translation

“I try to follow the rule laid down by perhaps the greatest translator of all, John Dryden, who maintained that a translator should – and I paraphrase – make the version as entertaining as possible, while at the same time remaining as faithful as possible to the spirit of the original” – Ranjit Bolt. In this book, Ranjit Bolt takes what is essentially a practitioner's view of the art of literary translation.

His observations are born of a quarter of a century's experience of translating for a living, especially for the theatre.

While rooted in practice, however, this survey does not shy away from theory, but is packed with allusion to great translation theorists such as Walter Benjamin and John Dryden, as well as adumbrating Bolt's own theoretical stance.