Even within a single language, one word can so very often substitute another. As I said earlier, it is the writer’s job, and subsequently the translator’s, to choose among them. While the writer typically has one go, translation extends this game and complicates it significantly. Given that there are so often multiple terms to say the same thing, we are all playing the substitution game in the way we think, speak, write, and otherwise express ourselves. The dictionary reminds us that there are more synonyms than antonyms. Not all words have an opposite, but the vast majority have stand-ins to
...more
