Write, that I may see Thee! – What translators do

Thought is movement. Out of nothing it comes, at the full stop it is arrested – at least for a moment. In German, sentences may fall down like heavy drops,
self–contained universes, introduced by a conjunction and ending with a
participle or an infinitive, like the beginning of the introduction to Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason”:

Ob die Bearbeitung der Erkenntnisse, die zum Vernunftgeschäfte gehören,
den sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft gehe oder nicht, das läßt sich bald
aus dem Erfolg beurteilen.

Whether the treatment of that portion of our knowledge which lies within
the province of pure reason advances with that undeviating certainty
which characterizes the progress of science, we shall be at no loss to
determine.

Other sentences may follow the first one. The movement goes on, again interrupted by other stops, by hesitations and suspensions: semicolons, commas, colons, dashes, ellipses. Thought is punctuated movement.

Guided by punctuation, thought may even trail off, as is typical for impressionist writers like Peter Altenberg. In order to make this fading visible, we use ellipses (“...”) or – like Altenberg – three dashes: “She is occupied, occupied by the works of nature and her mysteries – – –“. But not always can three dashes be read as signs of a thought that may fly elsewhere. Some philosophical writers use their own system for punctuation, that means: they have their own rhythm.

1

Hamann, “Magus of the North”, uses single, double and triple dashes.
He sometimes ends his paragraphs with the latter.

den ersten Menschen bewog unter dem gelehnten Balg eine anschauende
Erkenntnis vergangener und künftiger Begebenheiten auf die Nachwelt
fortzupflanzen – – –

That means, he is changing theme. It is not to be intended as an
invitation to float away in dreams, as the English translation (Blackwell) suggests:

This moved primal man to hand on to posterity beneath this borrowed skin
an intuitive knowledge of past and future events …

The rhythm of this thinker is fast and hard, not poetic and dreamy. What
else should we expect from a writer who starts:

Not a lyre! Nor a painter’s brush! A winnowing-fan for my Muse, to clear
the threshing-floor of holy literature!  
 
How is a philosopher of this dramatical type supposed to go on? In smoothly floating periods? Like the following? 

Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race; even as the garden is
older than the ploughed field, painting than script; as song is more
ancient than declamation; parables older than reasoning; barter than
trade. A deep sleep was the repose of our farthest ancestors; and their
movement a frenzied dance. Seven days they would sit in the silence of
deep thought or wonder; – and would open their mouths to utter winged
sentences.

In German, it sounds like a butcher's knife on the marble board:

Poesie ist die Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechts; wie der Gartenbau, älter als der Acker: Malerey, – als Schrift: Gesang, – als Deklamation: Gleichnisse, – als Schlüsse: Tausch, – als Handel. Ein tieferer Schlaf war die Ruhe unserer Urahnen; und ihre Bewegung, ein
taumelnder Tanz. Sieben Tage im Stillschweigen des Nachsinns oder Erstaunens saßen sie; – – und thaten ihren Mund auf – zu geflügelten Sprüchen.
 
A series of colons, as if each term were explained by the next one, forming a chain. Four m-dashes that interrupt the flow in order to announce four surprises: every single part of this long period goes against common sense. Not caring about grammar rules, at the end the author's double dash evidences the length of the “seven days” of silence. In translation, only one, shy, dash appears, substituting Hamann's double one. Why?

Translators normalize their texts. The author feels he is a genius, and he expresses himself accordingly. Translators do not, and even if they did, no editor would believe them. Never trust translation. There is no thought without its proper punctuation.

2

Wittgenstein, though staying in England, continued to write in German,
Only in his mother tongue he felt secure to move in a hazardous manner:

Ich werde auch das Ganze: der Sprache und der Tätigkeiten, mit denen sie verwoben ist, das »Sprachspiel« nennen.

The colon betwen noun and genitive apposition: “the whole: of language and of the activities” would certainly not meet with approval from any teacher. Wittgenstein by this colon expresses a hesitation, he announces the new thought he is going to set into being, and he tells us he doesn't care about proper style. Wittgenstein here is not modest. No philosopher really is, not Kant, not Kierkegaard, let alone Hegel. 

The English translator dismantles Wittgenstein's attack against the rules of proper writing, translating the colon as well:

I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the 'language-game'.
 
Translators write nice texts. It's not their fault. Their editors ask them to do so. But, in a certain way, what they write is not philosophy. The movement of thought has its own rhythm, its own punctuation.