literary translation

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the practice of rendering a literary work — novel, poem, play, or essay — from one language into another while preserving as fully as possible the aesthetic, cultural, and emotional qualities of the original, a task that requires not only bilingual competence but deep sensitivity to voice, rhythm, cultural reference, and the way meaning is embedded in the specific resources of each language; literary translation is understood in contemporary translation studies not as mere transfer of content but as a creative act of interpretation, with the translator making thousands of micro-decisions that shape the receiving culture's experience of the source text; debates in the field include the tension between foreignisation — preserving the strangeness of the source culture — and domestication — making the text read fluently in the target language — associated with Lawrence Venuti's critique of the translator's invisibility and the tendency of powerful literary cultures to absorb foreign works on their own terms