The Translator’s Impossible Task
Vladimir Nabokov once described translation as “the art of failure.” He wasn’t being melodramatic. Consider the opening lines of Anna Karenina: “Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.” Constance Garnett rendered this as “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But the Russian carries a rhythm, a musical quality that English cannot capture. The word “похожи” (pokhozhi) suggests resemblance rather than mere similarity, while “по-своему” (po-svoyemu) implies something more intimate than “in its own way”—perhaps “in its own particular manner.” Something gets lost right from the start, in these famous first words.
This isn’t a failure of skill or attention. It’s the fundamental challenge of literary translation: languages don’t simply swap words for words. They carry entire worldviews, cultural assumptions, and ways of thinking embedded in their grammar and vocabulary. When Roberto Bolaño writes “la literatura es peligrosa” in 2666, translators face a choice. “Literature is dangerous” loses the gendered personification of la literatura. In Spanish, literature is feminine, creating subtle implications about creativity and risk that English cannot replicate without awkward explanation.
The Cultural Minefield of Context
Cultural adaptation presents even thornier challenges than linguistic ones. When Haruki Murakami’s translator Jay Rubin encounters references to Japanese convenience stores, train systems, or corporate culture, he must decide how much to explain without turning fiction into anthropology. In Norwegian Wood, the protagonist’s relationship with vinyl records carries specific cultural weight in 1960s Japan, a country rebuilding its relationship with Western culture while maintaining distinct social hierarchies. Simply translating “record collection” misses layers of meaning about class, taste, and cultural identity that Japanese readers would immediately understand.
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels present similar challenges. Ann Goldstein’s translations must convey not just the Italian language but the specific dialect patterns, class markers, and regional tensions that shape the characters’ world. When Lila speaks in Neapolitan dialect, it signals her working-class background and resistance to standard Italian cultural norms. Goldstein chooses to indicate these shifts through syntax and vocabulary rather than attempting to replicate dialect directly. It preserves readability while sacrificing some cultural specificity.
When Publishers Demand Impossible Choices
Market pressures often force translators into uncomfortable compromises. Consider the English-language publication of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Reg Keyland’s translation faced pressure to americanize Swedish cultural references for broader appeal. The original title Män som hatar kvinnor literally means “Men Who Hate Women”, a direct, confrontational statement. The English publisher chose “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” shifting focus from systemic misogyny to individual mystery and making Lisbeth Salander into a marketable character brand rather than a symbol of resistance.
Publishing timelines create more pressure. When Knausgård’s Min Kamp became an international sensation, publishers rushed English translations to market. Don Bartlett’s work, while accomplished, occasionally shows signs of this haste. Complex Norwegian compound words get broken into longer English phrases, subtly changing the rhythm and density of Knausgård’s prose. The original Norwegian reads like one continuous thought process. The English sometimes feels more segmented and analytical.
Economic factors influence which books get translated at all. Publishers favor authors from certain countries and languages over others, creating what Emily Apter calls “translation zones”. These are areas of high literary exchange versus regions that remain largely untranslated. This market-driven selection process means readers encounter a skewed sample of world literature, weighted toward languages and cultures that publishers believe will sell.
The Subtle Art of Invisible Correction
Sometimes the most skilled translation work involves correcting problems in the original text. When Gregory Rabassa translated Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad, he occasionally improved upon Márquez’s Spanish. The English “One Hundred Years of Solitude” has passages that flow more smoothly than their Spanish counterparts. Márquez himself acknowledged this, saying Rabassa’s translation was better than his original in places.
This raises questions about fidelity versus readability. Should translators preserve an author’s stylistic quirks and occasional weaknesses, or create the best possible version of the work in the target language? Lydia Davis’s translations of Maurice Blanchot maintain his deliberately difficult, repetitive style even when it challenges English readers. Meanwhile, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s Dostoevsky translations prioritize literal accuracy over smooth English prose, sometimes producing sentences that feel awkward but capture the Russian syntax.
Cultural adaptation can involve strategic omission. When translating contemporary Chinese fiction, translators often face references to political events, social movements, or cultural practices that would require extensive footnotes to explain to Western readers. Some choose to provide brief context. Others trust readers to encounter unfamiliar elements without explanation, believing that part of reading translated literature involves accepting gaps in understanding.
Reading Between Languages
The most honest approach to translation acknowledges its limitations while celebrating its possibilities. Edith Grossman, translator of Don Quixote and numerous Latin American authors, describes translation as “a kind of reading” rather than mechanical conversion. Each translation is one reader’s deep engagement with the original text, filtered through their understanding of both languages and cultures involved.
Consider reading multiple translations of the same work. Compare Constance Garnett’s flowing Victorian prose in her Tolstoy translations with the more literal approach of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Each reveals different aspects of the original while concealing others. Garnett’s Karenina moves with English literary grace. Pevear and Volokhonsky’s version feels more foreign, more specifically Russian in its rhythms and thought patterns.
The challenge for readers becomes learning to read translation itself as an art form. When we encounter Bolaño in English, we’re reading both Bolaño and his translator Natasha Wimmer, both the Chilean author’s voice and the American translator’s interpretation of that voice. Understanding this dual authorship doesn’t diminish the reading experience. It enriches it, adding layers of creative collaboration to our encounter with foreign literature.
What other invisible artistic partnerships shape the books we think we know?