Open Sesame! Translators Unlock Words and Worlds

But Do They Sometimes Steer Us Wrong? Can We Know? How Much Does It Matter?

I walk into my library and pull down books by authors I love: Mario Vargas Llosa, Eugene Vodolazkin, Yoko Ogawa, Alessandro Manzoni, Sigrid Undset, Clarice Lispector, Shusaku Endo, Mikhail Bulgakov, Yan Lianke, others besides. One thing all these novelists have in common? They write in languages besides English. My access to their work comes through the…