ABSTRACT
Translators ' prefaces and annotations often provide insightful observations about transla tion practice. New translations, however, are frequently undertaken with the intent of improving or even rectifying existing versions, and the evaluative comments they contain must themselves be evaluated in the light of their possible role in a translator's own project. The same is true of writing by translators about the work of other translators. Such comment ary is often both highly metaphorical and highly motivated with respect to a translator's effort or to the profession of translation itself. This means that commentary must be read in the context of prevailing rhetorical conven tions , and it makes the task of extracting general principles of evaluation treacherous if not impossible. The compliments found in such Renaissance poems as Constantijn Huygens's verses on translations by Jacob Westerbaen or those by James Wright on DRYDEN's translations were in fact a deliberate strategy to improve the subordinate position of translations (Hermans 1 985b: 1 17).
