SEELANGS Digest - 19-20 May 2010 (#2010-185)

[Olga Meerson]

Thank you Josh,
Nearly two years ago, I emerged, with a new lease on life, from a surgery done by an expert doctor, in fact, a true wonder-worker. Now I clearly see how different a great doctor is from a mediocre one (mine was a brain surgeon). I am very grateful to him, and after the surgery, he congratulated me as much as I congratulated and thanked him. That is the nature of gratitude. Somehow, you feel more, not less, of it, when your life depends on being in it all. In some sense, that was the case between me and Robert as well: I was very much involved with at least two of his major projects. When it comes to his translations, I am not merely a consumer but a very involved participant. But that makes me gape in wonder at the ways in which he conveys the impossible and the untranslatable: After all, very often, I have been the one pointing out how impossible to translate this or that a locution is!
 
But David Powelstock was right: my original sentence was clumsy and subject to misunderstandings. In fact, I can see now how someone like Stephen might grind his teeth because of my style. I should have spared Robert that praise: he deserves nothing stylistically flawed, let alone semantically dubious. My apologies to robert, Stephen, David, and the rest of you on this list.
o.m.

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