A quote from William Griffin, translator of the deuterocanonical books in The Message:Catholic/Ecumenical Edition, while translating some of the Latin classics into English, as found in Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book:
"I fully intended to do the literal translation, of course, and yes, better than any of my predecessors had done, but I soon found myself faltering. Fidelity seemed its only virtue. Felicity was nowhere to be seen. But Fidelity without Felicity in translation can be a very mean virtue indeed.... As many before me, I'd always thought Paraphrase was bonkers. Why? Because my intellectual betters had told me so, and I had no occasion to say them nay. But what they never told me in so many words was that all translation was all too errant. Soon thereafter I concluded that if err I must, then I'd prefer to err on the side of Paraphrase rather than Literalese (172)."
And of course, there is this classic quote from Msgr. Ronald Knox:
"The translator, let me suggest in passing, must never be frightened of the word 'paraphrase'; it is a bogey of the half-educated. As I have already tried to point out, it is almost impossible to translate a sentence without paraphrasing; it is a paraphrase when you translate 'Comment vous portez-vous?' by 'How are you?' But often enough it will be a single word that calls for paraphrase. When St. Paul describes people as "wise according to the flesh', the translator is under an obligation to paraphrase. In English speech, you might be called fat according to the flesh, or thin according to the flesh, but not wise or foolish. The flesh here means natural, human standards of judging, and the translator has got to say so. 'Wise according to the flesh' is Hebrew in English dress; it is not English (Englishing the Bible 8-9)."
