of the best translation; but no one else has expressed it half so well:
There is one point (never yet, I believe, noticed) which, obviously, should be considered in translation. We should so render the original that the version should impress the people for whom it is intended just as the original impresses the people for whom it (the original) is intended.
Now, if we rigorously translate mere local idiosyncrasies of phrase (to say nothing of idioms) we inevitably distort the author's designed impression. We are sure to produce a whimsical, at least, if not always a ludicrous, effect—for novelties, in a case of this kind, are incongruities and oddities. A distinction, of course, should be observed between those peculiarities which appertain to the nation and those which belong to the author himself, for these latter will have a similar effect upon all nations, and should be literally translated.…
The phraseology of every nation has a taint of drollery about it in the ears of every other na-
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