In the complex process of translation adapting a text to a different linguistic medium there is always a potential danger of modifying to a certain degree the basic stylistic characteristics of the original. Trying to illustrate the point the author compares an early German translation otf Ossians Poems with the English original, and comes to the conclusion that the traslator has modified the text to adapt it to the dominant stylistic expression of his own literary scene. In his translation verse, style and images are typical of a belated baroque kind of poetry still prevailing at his time in Vienna. In adapting his translation to a different, almost opposed, stylistic convention the translator missed the basic style and spirit of the original. By exposing a rather extreme example of a typically 18th century way of translating, the author wants to indicate one of the still possible and not quite unfrequent transgressions in translation.
