He translated himself into a woman's voice".
Much of the Old Testament he translated himself, and the work, published in 1584, adorned with woodcuts and ornamented initials, was a monument of literature and craftsmanship.
After completing "L'Innommable," in 1953, Beckett set about translating himself back into English, as he did with almost all his plays.
Translating himself from French into English and sometimes from English into French, Beckett became a great writer in both languages, and seemed lifted clear of nationality at a time when nationality appeared the besetting sin of belligerent humanity.
Shortly after learning his fate he composed the song Through Long, Long Years, to words by the Norwegian poet JP Jacobsen, which Delius translated himself: "Through long, long years we must atone/ For what was but a trifling pleasure".
It includes Ngũgĩ's story Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ, which the award-winning author originally wrote in Kikuyu, a Kenyan language, and then translated himself into English as The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright.
Harvill Secker; £18.99In this sprawling farce, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, translating himself from his original Gikuyu having stretched his language as no one else has done, portrays a wizard who brings about the demise of a dictator and gives hope to his country, the mythical Free Republic of Aburiria.
At the age of 52, Unwin is already halfway there, having directed five and currently on his sixth – The Lady from the Sea, starring Joely Richardson, which continues Ibsen's "endless exploration of how men and women live together", and which he has even translated himself from its original Norwegian.
And once he had translated himself back into his native tongue, his unmistakable voice lonely, Irish, painfully funny always broke through.He was the opposite of a self-promoter: intensely private and fearful of fame, he was more of a self-demoter.
