Thank you, but that really is impossible. We all bring our linguistic and cultural into the process of reading, interpreting, understanding and translating texts in foreign languages. The best we can do, is to be aware of this problem, and try to minimalize it as best we can. But we never succeed 100 %, and usually it is easier for others to discover failings, misunderstandings and mistakes than it is for ourselves.PeterB wrote:Particularly when approached without subjectivism...and your readings are admirable in that regard Kare.
Therefore it is a great advantage to be able to cooperate with some critically minded friends during a translation. I was lucky enough to have that benefit during my last translation work, collecting and translating a large anthology of Pali texts into Norwegian. Their critical remarks sometimes annoyed me, since I was convinced that my suggestions were better than theirs ... and we had lots of debates. But I have to admit that the final result became much better thanks to their efforts.