Poetry is what is lost in translation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, in Biographia Literaria, ch. Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing . It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift. As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy .
Translation is very much like copying paintings.
The only interesting sort of translating is that of classics, Pasternak believed. A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations. It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel. It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.