Mair is also a critically acclaimed translator of The Art of War: Sun Zi's Military Methods and the editor of The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature.
The art of the translator, like the art of the narrator, lies in knowing when to paraphrase and when not to.
Prosecutors opened a new court case against Sel Yayincilik in Istanbul this year, charging the publisher and the translator with publishing an obscene work of art that uses children as its material.
Given the pressure Flaubert applied to each sentence, there is no greater test of a translator's art than "Madame Bovary".
And although about 10 times as many books get translated out of English than into it – we are an insular linguistic community – we must salute the ingenuity of the translator's art.
More than a quarter-century after he wrote "Beyond Therapy," it is still very funny in a language not generally mentioned in discussions of the translator's art: American Sign Language.
Raf Simons has been one of fashion's most effective translators of youth, contemporary art and fashion history.
Jana Putrle Srdić (1975, Ljubljana) is a poet, art film reviewer, and translator of poetry who lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she works as a visual art producer.
She is also the translator of Michel Chion's Film, A Sound Art, The Voice in Cinema, and 2001: Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey.
So enjoy this fabulous banquet of the writer's, and the translator's art, served with pride by the judges – Frank Wynne, Elif Shafak, Gabriel Josipovici, Jean Boase-Beier and myself - and hosted again through the consistently generous support of Arts Council England and Champagne Taittinger.
