Between Pudeur and Falsification: Thoughts on Translating Indecent Language

This paper emphasizes the fallaciousness of the concept of “translation decency” and the extent to which this distorts the source text, revealing primarily the translator’s prudery. Such prudery should play no part in translation; the translator needs to convey the author’s intentions even when s/he does not share their ideas. Although I am not afraid of being judged for judging others, I have chosen to use my own translations as examples, for the act of interlinguistic translation is in itself a choice, certainly as faithful to the original as possible.