A review of a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the November 14, 2022 issue of The New Yorker (“Past Imperfect”, by Daniel Mendelsohn) includes the following line: “McCarter confronts the tricky issues associated with both the poet and his epic not only in her forthright introduction but in the translation itself, where, like an art restorer removing decades of browned varnish from an Old Master, she strips away a number of inaccuracies and embellishments that have accreted in translations over decades and centuries, obscuring the sense of certain passages…” The metaphor of the removal of layers from a painting’s surface as the uncovering of the true meaning of something is used fairly often--and that action is probably what many people associate with conservation . As this metaphor produces a limited picture of what conservation is, is its use of benefit to the field?
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