# Transcript

Susan Bassnett
The first thing a translator faces when confronted with something that needs to be translated is that the translator has to read – very, very, very carefully. And I would say that the first stage of translation is this expertise in reading. The translator has to fully understand how the work is put together in terms of its basic meaning, its structure – and then, in addition to that, the translator's got to understand what is going on, let's say inside and around the work – so the context of the work – not only what's being said but what actually isn't being said, but is being implied in it.
The really big question about translation is whether or not a translated work is the same, and I would argue in fact that it isn't. I would argue that just as I think translators have got to be expert readers, so translators have also got to be very good writers because what they're doing is rewriting; and there's no way of getting around the fact that translation is rewriting. And sometimes the rewriting is fairly minimal, sometimes it's enormous, it can be a complete sort of reshaping and rethinking of the work.