(Century illustration / Source images: Getty)
We often talk about a particular translation as “doing justice” to a text. By that, we mean that it expresses it fully—that whatever heights of prose or sleights of hand the author concocted in the original language, the translator managed to do the same, backward and in heels. When a translation is “just,” it has seen and considered and transmitted into a new language all of the facets and possibilities inherent in a text.
There’s another sense of the phrase “do justice,” of course, and it involves our orientation toward other people. There too, we value seeing people for what they are, considering both their flaws and possibilities, and allowing them to flourish as best we can.
I’ve spent the past several years thinking about both kinds of justice. I’m both a translator and an immigration rights advocate, and my book Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration circles around this idea of doing justice both on the page and in the world.
