During the eighteenth century, a growing body of German commentary presented a striking alternative to the French and English traditions. The fullest theoretical statement in this German trend is Friedrich Schleiermacher’s 1813 lecture to the Berlin Academy of Sciences. For Schleiermacher, the ideal translation creates an “image” that incorporates the knowledge and taste of “a man who is well acquainted with the foreign language, yet to whom it remains nonetheless foreign”. In assigning importance to a sense of foreignness, Schleiermacher excluded not only commercial and pragmatic uses of translation, but also the sorts of paraphrases and imitation that long prevailed in translation practice and commentary. He spoke for an elite cultural taste and aimed to set it up as a standard for translators and readers of translations. He imagined foreignizing translation as a nationalist practice that can build a German language and literature and overcome the French cultural and political domination.