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Literary translations have always been a thorny topic and will probably remain so because language translation is a combination of art and science and it does not come with any tools that can exactly evaluate a translation. Literary works are generally heavily grounded in the culture and language they represent and they project a lot of thoughts and ideas implicitly which makes them very difficult to translate satisfactorily.
An enduring issue in language translation concerns the author’s role. How does a translator figure out what the author was really trying to convey through a sentence/paragraph or the entire book. As mentioned earlier, literary works – in parts, as well as whole, can be subject to multiple interpretations. What’s the author’s place in this scheme of things? The translator cannot assume the author’s intentions, even if he or she does so, there’s no guarantee that the assumption would be correct. So is it then all right to judge the text on its own merits? The situation might be resolved to a certain extent if the author and translator work closely on the project. But this is not always possible, many authors either don’t have the time to allocate to a translation project, else they are not inclined to do so.
There might never be a perfect solution to literary translation dilemmas, the safest way to go is probably to live with the book for a sufficient period of time, read and re-read it and then if possible discuss it with the author, before getting into the actual translation process.
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