We commonly evaluate translations in terms of their “accuracy” or “fidelity”; sometimes we allow a translator more or less “license,” that is, we release the translator from the obligation to be faithful to the original text and give him/her a degree of “freedom.” All these terms have an ethical connotation: that is, they are not just about the transfer of information or about linguistic structures, but rather express a sense that the translator has a moral duty to the author being translated and to the audience for the translation. In construing translation as a moral act, we define a community and pronounce rules that are supposed to be binding on members of the community; we even suggest rewards and punishments to follow from the act of translation (these may come in the form of good or bad reputation, or even in the form of lawsuits).
When and why do translators receive “license” (akin to “poetic license,” that is, freedom from the rules of grammar and truth)? It seems that when the distance to be traversed between the original text and the audience of the translation is at its greatest, the greatest degree of “freedom” is permitted— this “freedom” arises from necessity because a strict translation would make no sense. Or “freedom" may be conceded by default, because few among the audience can check the translator’s work, or care to. This condition applies to Ezra Pound’s _Cathay_ in the early decades of its reception. Another kind of “freedom” arises when the original is experimental and breaks the rules of the original language in a way that a translator may try to imitate in the language of the translation. Or sometimes a translator simply takes the freedom to alter the form or content of the original, as if claiming the status of independent artist. In this last case, the ethical vocabulary seems to fall away, for artists are notorious for following no rules but those they set down.
