u/stranglethebars

How easy/difficult is his prose, in your view? Is there anything in particular you like (or dislike) about it? Do you have any thoughts on to what extent (and how) his writing style changed over the years? Has, perhaps, your view on his style changed over time?

Also, for those of you who speak German, and/or have read about assessments of translations of his works:

What's your opinion on those translations? Have any translations of his works been described as inadequate? Having in mind that some have defended various French philosophers against language-related criticism by saying that the problem is the translation, not the original French phrasings. (As it happens, I recently came across an English translation of something Jacques Lacan wrote that struck me as ambiguous, but I didn't find Lacan's sentence in French ambiguous.)

This is a topic I've been interested in for years, and I was reminded of it yesterday when refreshing my mind about the statement by Lacan that in English has been written as "from an analytic point of view, the only thing of which one can be guilty is to have given ground relative to one’s desire". I found the phrasing ambiguous (does it discourage yielding to one's desire or not?), so I looked up what Lacan actually said in French: "La seule chose dont on peut se sentir coupable, au moins dans la perspective psychanalytique, c’est d’avoir cédé sur son désir", which seemed more clear (I interpret "d’avoir cédé sur son désir" largely as "to have compromised on one's desire").

Assuming what I said above is right, then one may wonder how many other cases there are of English translations making statements by various authors appear more confusing than they are in their original form. So, what are your impressions of this? How unclear are their original writings? To what extent have they been distorted by questionable English translations?

By the way, my scope is wide, so, I'd be interested in your views on anyone in/around the critical theory and philosophy spheres who has been accused of using excessively advanced language and so on -- at least if there's a chance that the translations contributed to the excesses and confusions.