My son proved to be a marvellously congenial translator, and it was settled between us that fidelity to one’s author comes first, no matter how bizarre the result. Vive le pédant, and down with the simpletons who think that all is well if the ‘spirit’ is rendered (while the words go away by themselves on a naïve and vulgar spree – in the suburbs of Moscow for instance – and Shakespeare is again reduced to play the king’s ghost).
