In his engaging review of Edith Grossman's "Why Translation Matters" (April 11), Richard Howard provides a catalog of those who Grossman says ignore translators and translations.
That's why translation matters.
To the Editor: As one involved in the problems of translation, I admired the sketch accompanying the review of "Why Translation Matters," which illustrated translation's winding perils.
One of them, Edith Grossman, recently published her own robust, even combative, defence of her metier in a manifesto entitled Why Translation Matters (Yale, £10.99).
"Why Translation Matters" (an extended essay, really) is one of the first texts in Yale's energetic new series, Why X Matters, each volume of which is to present a "concise argument for the continuing relevance of an important person or idea".
El Greco's great subject is the translation of matter into spirit, caught on the cusp.
The translation, no matter how over the top, has fooled at least one film critic on the Russian newspaper Kommersant, who quoted parts of the pirated version in a generally positive review.
Another magazine biting the proverbial dust was the translation, no matter how we tried to spin it.
