Gained from translations

Had it not been for great translators, doyens of literature wouldn’t have been household names, says Suresh Menon

I read recently that there are some 60 literary festivals in our country annually. Yet, how many of these dedicate a whole festival or a day of the festival or even a single session to a discussion on that most neglected aspect of literature: translation? We know who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, Hopscotch, Name of The Rose, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and a hundred other classics. But how many of us know who translated these works so we could enjoy them in a language we understand?