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prase comments on The Optimizer's Curse and How to Beat It - Less Wrong
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What matters, obviously, is not whether Burns has passed into folk status, but whether the particular translation has. The latter seems an implausible claim (since printed translations can presumably be traced and attributed), but if it were true, then there would be no need for acknowledgement (almost by definition of "folk status").
My comment arose from the suspicion that you reacted as if Burns had been paraphrased, as opposed to translated -- because the original language looks similar enough to English that a translation will tend to look like a paraphrase. I find it unlikely that you would actually have made this comment if lukeprog had quoted Catallus without mentioning the translator; and on the other hand I suspect you would have commented if he had taken the liberty of paraphrasing (or "translating") a passage from Shakespeare into contemporary English without acknowledging he had done so. My point being that the case of Burns should be treated like the former scenario, rather than the latter, whereas I suspect you intuitively perceived the opposite.
All translation is paraphrase, of course -- but there is a difference of connotation that corresponds to a difference in etiquette. When one is dealing with an author writing in the same language as oneself, there is a certain obligation to the original words that does not (cannot) exist in the case of an author writing in a different language. So basically, I saw your comment as not-acknowledging that Burns was writing in a different language.
I don't see it as lowering the status of the quoter; the status dynamic that I perceive is that it grants very high status to the original author, status so high that we're willing to overlook the original author's handicap of speaking a different language. In effect, it grants them honorary in-group status.
For example: Descartes has high enough status that the content of his saying "I think therefore I am" is more important to us than the fact that his actual words would have sounded like gibberish (unless we know French); people who speak gibberish normally have low status. Or, as Arnold Schoenberg once remarked (probably in German), "What the Chinese philosopher says is more important than that he speaks Chinese". Only high-status people like philosophers get this kind of treatment!
Are you saying that always when a sentence is translated, its author must have high status or gains high status at the moment of translation, because the default attitude is to ignore anything originally uttered in foreign language?
If this is what you mean, I find it surprising. I have probably never been in a situation when someone was ignored because he spoke incomprehensible gibberish and that fact was more important than the content of his words. Of course, translation may be costly and people generally pay only for things they deem valuable, which is where the status comes into play. But it doesn't mean that with low-status people it is more important that they speak gibberish than what they say.
(A thought experiment: A Gujarati speaking beggar approaches a rich English gentleman, says something and goes away. The Englishman's wife, who is accompanying him at the moment, accidentally understands Gujarati. The man can recognise the language but doesn't understand a word. What is the probability that he asks his wife "what did he say"? As a control group, imagine the same with an English beggar, this time the gentleman didn't understand because when the beggar had spoken, a large truck had passed by. Is the probability of asking "what did he say" any different from the first group?)
Yes. More generally, the default attitude is to ignore anything uttered by a member of an outgroup. By calling attention to the fact that a sentence has been translated, one is calling attention to the fact that the author speaks a foreign language and thus to the author's outgroup status. Omitting mention of a person's outgroup status is a courtesy extended to those we wish to privilege above typical outgroup members.
Curiosity about what a low-status person says does not imply that one thinks the content of their words is a more important fact about them than their low status. With high probability, the most salient aspect of the beggar from the perspective of the Englishman is that he is a beggar (and, in the first case, a foreign beggar at that). Whatever the beggar said, if the Englishman finds out and deems it worthy of recounting later, I would be willing to bet that he will not omit mention of the fact that he heard it from a beggar.