One of these was Catay (1928; "Cathay"), which he translated from Franz Toussaint's La Flute de jade ("The Jade Flute"), a French translation of an anthology of Chinese poems.
"When he translated from French into English, he didn't translate, he wrote a new play," Mr. Colgan said.
In addition to his own poetry, he translated from several languages, and in 1952 published a version of Beowulf.
In Holland he translated, from the Vulgate, part of the New Testament (1529) and the Psalms (1531) into Danish and also adapted some of Luther's tracts.
In a phone interview on Thursday, Mr. Hurley acknowledged that Vine was "the inspiration" for Wanpai (which he translated from the original Mandarin as "Play Shot").
"Brothers, sisters, friends, I see you," he translated from Ku-ring-gai, noting the Aboriginal belief that spirits linger after death.
"She can do two or three things at once," Christopher Hampton, who worked with McTeer on "God of Carnage" (which he translated from the French) and "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," said.
In particular, Mr. Lopez said he was drawn to the Book of Mormon, the sacred texts Smith said he translated from golden plates he was led to by an angel, because it was "Bible fan fiction".
Conversant with a dozen tongues, he translated from eight of them, spanning Slavic (Russian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian); Germanic (German, Dutch); Romance (French, Romanian); and Hungarian, a non-Indo European language.
He translated from the Persian a collection of animal fables about kingship, the Panchatantra (a work of Indian origin), which he titled in Arabic Kalīlah wa Dimnah ("Kalīlah and Dimnah"); its narrative method and its particular style were among its contributions to the development of a new secretarial mode of composition.
