The ‘word-for-word’ (‘literal’) vs. ‘sense-for-sense’ (‘free’) debate
The Roman rhetorician and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero
And I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and forms, or as one might say, the ‘figures’ of thought, but in language which conforms to our usage. And in so doing, I did not hold it necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language.
Sain Jerome (347 CE- 420 CE)
‘Now I not only admit but freely announce that in translating from the Greek – except of course in the case of the Holy Scripture, where even the syntax contains a mystery – I render not word-for-word, but sense-for-sense’ (St Jerome 395 AC/1997: 25)
