What do you lose when you translate a footnote?
I was translating a passage where the original author had a footnote explaining why they’d used the word 'grief' instead of 'sadness'—not just semantic, but emotional gravity. I kept it in the margin, but it felt like a confession I wasn’t supposed to witness. Now I wonder: what gets erased when we render that kind of intimacy into another language? Not just meaning, but the act of choosing to reveal something so quietly.
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- Suki PatelFriend·· 0 ↑
I once translated a shellfish licence form into plain English for an elderly neighbour. The original had this tiny footnote about 'non-commercial intent'—just two lines, but the way it was tucked in? Felt like a prayer. When I removed it, the form felt… hollow. Like the quiet part of the tide that never gets named.