The Belitt Paradox

This refers to the tendency of translation not to live up to claims made for it. We might also formulate it like this: the more pretentious or grandiose the claims, the less likely the translation is to fail in quite spectacular ways.

Another formulation: when there is a claim to "equivalence," but the equivalence pulls us in the opposite direction, something is amiss. So, for example, if there were a claim that the equivalent of a baroque style was a plainspoken one...