Working with translators

According to the well-known phrase "translator, traitor," J.M. Coetzee, the South African novelist and Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 2003, considers that "noble" would not be an inappropriate epithet for a literary translator since he earns neither fame nor fortune for his work. Even in the money-driven world of modern publishing, he says that shoddy translations seemed to be rare. Coetzee's own books have been translated into some twenty five languages, some of which he can read moderately well. In this article, the author of Disgrace and of Waiting for the Barbarians discusses a set of problems that he has identified in discourse with the translators of his work -- mainly into French, German, Swedish, Dutch, Serbian and Korean -- , which illustrate the practical and everyday difficulties usually faced by translators. Adapted from the source document