The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No book was ever turned from one language
into another, without imparting something of its native idiom; this is the most
mischievous and comprehensive innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and
the fabrick of the tongue continue the same, but new phraseology changes much
at once; it alters not the
single stones of the building, but the order of the columns. If an
academy should be established for the cultivation of our stile, which I, who can
never wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty
will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and
dictionaries, endeavour, with all their influence, to stop the licence of
translatours, whose idleness and ignorance,
if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.
Samuel Johnson, from Preface
to the Dictionary, 1755.
