> What makes a translation great? A publisher that gives you a lot of time to work! I have done some literary translations out of certain European languages in

> What makes a translation great? A publisher that gives you a lot of time to work! I have done some literary translations out of certain European languages into my own, and there is not much time to sculpt a really powerful translation when the publisher wants the whole novel done in 3 months or so, and of course during this time I will be juggling this job with other jobs, because literary translation by itself doesn't pay the bills. Most other literary translators I know have the same complaint. Words like "sweatshop" are used to describe the industry, and you definitely feel that publishers, at least in my country, don’t believe that the general public really cares about quality; the publishers just want to crank out the content as fast as possible. Often the classic translations across European languages – Joyce’s Ulysses, or verse translations of Dante’s Commedia, or Shakespeare, or the Greek playwrights, etc. – were made over the course of a few years, and I envy anyone who had a secure relationship with a publisher where they could take their time on the translation but still know that it would be published in the end and they would be fully paid for it.