A Few General Reflections
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Welsh-English translation offers a prime example of the ambiguous character of all literary translation when regarded as a significant form of intercultural transaction. Its potential for both negative and positive results, its capacity to act either as culture broker or culture breaker, may most conveniently be highlighted through the juxtaposition of three contrasting comments made in the context of what has come to be known as Translation Studies.
"There is in every act of translation – especially where it succeeds – a touch of treason. Hoarded dreams, patterns of life, are being taken across the frontier". (George Steiner)
"At the heart of every imperial fiction (the heart of darkness) there is a fiction of translation. The colonial Other is translated into terms of the imperial self; with the end result of alienation for the colonized and a fiction of understanding for the colonizer". (Eric Cheyfitz)
"Co-existence implies translating the cultural, political, religious, emotional language of the other into a language and culture that is strengthened by the presence of the other. The alternative to translation is the muteness of fear". (Michael Cronin)
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