Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

analogy between author and SL readers and translatorand TL readers is useful, I think, precisely because italludes by omission to a third reader who, if kept inmind, could help orient the literary translator in makingdecisions about which textual features to save and whichcan be less harmfully lost. The third reader is, of course,the translator or perhaps, to expand the category, thosereaders who are able to read and interpret both the STand the TT and who can thus appreciate what has beenlost and retained in the passage from one to the other. Inother words, in making the inevitable decisions aboutwhat to keep and what to lose, the translator as writermust keep in mind the translator as reader. This idea hasbeen expressed much more clearly and succinctly by thewriter Wendy Lesser in her recent article “The Mysteriesof Translation”: “This is not to say that a Margaret JullCosta translation of the Portuguese novelist JosèSaramago sounds like a Margaret Jull Costa translationof the Spanish novelist Javier Marías — not at all. If itdid, Costa would have failed in her primary aim, to let ushear the writer’s voice as she herself hears it in the originallanguage.” 1 Obviously, thinking of their objective inthis way will not provide literary translators with uniformanswers to the questions they must ask along theway, but it does provide a guidepost to orient the decision-makingprocess.1W. Lesser, “The Mysteries of Translation,” TheChronicle of Higher Education, 27 September, 2002,p.B8.Translation Review 57