Read two translations of the same book back to back this month and I…

Read two translations of the same book back to back this month and I am still turning it over.

One is forty years old, reads beautifully, and is by every account I can find quite loose with the original; the other is recent and careful and I did not enjoy a page of it, which leaves the uncomfortable conclusion that what I love about that book might be something a translator did in 1981.

I do not read the original language and never will, so there is no version of this where I find out which of them is closer, and I am going to keep the 1981 one on the shelf and feel slightly odd about it.