The Romantic Age

The Romantic Age in which the Imagination became more important than anything else in creativity, saw a change in attitudes to translation. Poetry was seen as spontaneous and emotional.Very often it is difficult to explain what a poem means as the effect of the poem often lay behind the words and sentences. This part of the poem was difficult to capture and convey in another language. Creativity was valued very much and translation that did not require that much of creativity was seen as a secondary activity that derived from the primary act of writing poetry. The poet Shelley was of this view. However, there was a lot of translation activity going on during this period. German authors like Goethe were translated into English and English writers like Walter Scott and Lord Byron were translated into French and Italian.

In this context we should remember the German philosopher  Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834) who thought of a way out of the problem faced by translators. He was of the view that translations should use a language that retains the ‘foreignness’ of the original so that the reader could get a taste of the original work. Schleiermacher’s model is a much discussed one in translation theory today.