It’s Often The Simplest Prose That’s The Most Difficult To Translate

“It’s the challenge of the seemingly unadorned sentence or expression that passes so naturally it seems to ‘write itself.’ While the translation of these sentences can sometimes occur just as naturally, more often than not it requires vast amounts of hairpulling. Few things are as difficult as ease.” Mark Polizzotti offers some examples from his work translating the Nobel winner Patrick Modiano.