Both translation and literary criticism are, as copyright law attests, derivative, deriving from a prior text. A translation can be considered a better piece of writing than the original literary work. When we get to Baudelaire as a translator of Poe, we should keep in the back of our mind that for decades American literature specialists, especially in the United States,have speculated that Baudelaire surely improves Poe. I happen to disagree,but the argument is plausible. Or we can value a critical essay on a work more highly than we value the work, whether the critic was referring to the original or the translation. When we get to Baudelaire in translation, we should keep in mind that Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle and Yeats's introduction to A Vision are still studied, but that Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's Axèl, the armchair drama referred to in both works, is known chiefly by hearsay, even with translations in print. (Unstageable, it has had fewer than a half a dozen concert readings in over 100 years. Although Yeats was present for a reading on 26 February 1894, he was a monolingual and could not read a translation until the early 1920s.) But first there must be the literary work.

Literary translation is a transfer of distinctive features of a literary work into a language other than that of the work's first composition. But literary translation is also a form of literary criticism. It is just as offensive to assert that translation is the only valid form of criticism (i.e. How can you understand a work if you cannot translate it? i.e. express it in your own words?) as to assert that works can only be understood in their original language (i.e. How can you understand a work if you cannot read it?). Neither snobbery advances the understanding and appreciation of literature. What translating does is to help us get inside literature. We can do this both as translators, professional or amateur, and as literary critics, provided we make use of translating. We can do this directly, by putting into our own language the literature we are studying, or indirectly, by comparing translations. Either way we should feel we are moving inside what we are reading,examining literature from the inside, a way of making sure that we feel it from within. Either way, in short, provides a mechanism that enforces its own direction and momentum. It is even risky to use translation as a critical tool and/or end in itself if the work to be translated is not one we find congenial.

For works for which we have little or no attraction, it is probably psychologically safer to describe literature from the outside, and if we need to ascertain only the overt ideas or 'information', an outside description is nearly as accurate and complete.

Further, it must be admitted that with works for which we discover an overwhelming affinity, that discovery alone will get us inside. We need not bother with translating or criticizing. For enjoyment we do not need to know we are reading a translation. In fact, in some literary forms, we may not need to know the language; following the drift of language may suffice. Opera and film have fans who ignore supertitles and subtitles. But wouldn't such fans admit that knowing the libretto or the screenplay in their own language adds to their experience?

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