WHEN I WROTE the preface to my translation of the
Republic, I did not have to argue the importance of the book; I had to
justify only the need for a new translation when there were so many
famous existing versions. With Emile the situation is the reverse: there
is general agreement that the only available translation is inadequate in
all important respects, while the book itself is not held to be of great
significance and has little appeal to contemporary taste. However, this is
not the place to make a case for Emile. I can only hope that this transla-
tion will contribute to a reconsideration of this most fundamental and
necessary book.

The translation aims, above all, at accuracy. Of course, no intelligible
translation could be strictly literal, and simply bad English would mis-
represent Rousseau's very good French. Style cannot be separated from
substance. But unless the translator himself were a genius of Rous-
seau's magnitude, the attempt to imitate the felicity of his language
would fail and would distort and narrow his meaning. One would
have to look at what one can say well in English rather than at Rous-
seau's thought. He is a precise and careful writer. He speaks of a real
world of which we all have experience, no matter what our language.
He, above all writers, thought he spoke to all men. The translator
must concentrate on making his English point to the same things Rous-
seau's French points to. And this is best done by finding the closest
equivalents to his words and sticking to them, even when that causes
inconvenience.

Every translation is, of course, in some sense an interpretation; and
thus there can be no mechanical rules for translation. The question,
then, is what disposition guides the translator: whether the impossibility
of simple literalness is a fact against which he struggles and a source of
dissatisfaction with himself, or whether he uses it as an excuse to
display his virtuosity. As with most choices, the right one is least likely
to afford opportunities for flattering one's vanity. The translator of a
great work should revere his text and recognize that there is much in
it he cannot understand. His translation should try to make others able
to understand what he cannot understand, which means he often must
prefer a dull ambiguity to a brilliant resolution. He is a messenger, not
a plenipotentiary, and proves his fidelity to his great masters by re-
producing what seems in them to the contemporary eye wrong, out-
rageous, or incomprehensible, for therein may lie what is most im-
portant for us. He resists the temptation to make the book attractive or
relevant, for its relevance may lie in its appearing irrelevant to current
thought. If books are to be liberating, they must seem implausible in
the half-light of our plausibilities which we no longer know how to ques-

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