Bret Devereaux

This apropos of arguing that English 'courage' isn't quite the same as Latin's fortis or virtus, or Greek's ἀνδρεία (or any other number of similarly translatable words), despite the fact that in a translation you will, of course, read 'courage' for those words. 2/8

So you end up arguing in circles because the retort comes back, "but these are all forms of courage." But they're not! The Greeks didn't have modern English 'courage' in mind forming ἀνδρεία and senses of courage are non-overlapping. 3/8

All of which is to say, in a way, the very act of translating a text can create a misleading impression of its universality - some of the cultural specificity is erased unless you remember that the translation isn't the text, but merely a flat representation of it. 5/8

Just the very act of rendering a text into English makes it seem more Anglophone - more friendly to the broad complex of primarily English-speaking cultures - than it may actually be (and the same of course for any other language). 6/8

And the reverse too! Some translations of English to German sound/read just _wrong_ – the concepts just don’t travel well across the translation gap.

Total thread-jacking: I have been meaning to ask from native speakers and just continue to forget. In English: the Liberty/Freedom dichotomy. In French: not so easily separated. In ???? Feel free to ignore

Same in German, both are translated as “Freiheit”.