“Living in America, it’s easy to forget that most of the world does not speak English; and that much of the world’s literature is not written in English. In order for us to read the best of what the rest of the world writes — and in order for the rest of the world to experience our best literature — skilled writers must work in the art of translation. . . .”

So begins Rick Kleffel in “The Art of Translation,” which ran on NPR’s “All Things Considered” on November 22, 2008.  Kleffel interviews several working translators, including the great Burton Raffel, who expresses dismay at unneeded retranslations of classics when there is so much other literature left untranslated. The article also invites comparison of three translations of a passage from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.