Edith Grossman begins Why Translation Matters with the premise that all writing is already translation: “Even when authors and readers speak the same language, writers are obliged to translate, to transform the images and ideas flowing through their most intimate spaces into legible terms.”

She defends literary translators not as artisans but as writers, performers, even. She quotes Ralph Manheim: “Translators are like actors who speak the lines as the author would, if the author could speak English.”

But Borges asked his translators for something stranger: “Simplify me, modify me, make me stark… I want the power of Cynewulf, Beowulf, Bede. Make me macho and gaucho and skinny.”

And Bernhard: “A translation is a different book. It has nothing to do with the original… It’s a book by the person who translated it.” He is wrong, but not entirely. A translation is not the same book. But it may be the only one we can read.

The question nags, particularly before beginning Don Quixote in Grossman’s translation: am I reading Cervantes, or Grossman?