The Art of Reading Like a Translator

By just about any measure, Damion Searls, an American translator of German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch, is one of the leading practitioners of his art. He has translated the works of widely acknowledged masters (Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke), writers who ought to be (Ingeborg Bachmann, Dubravka Ugrešić), and two recent Nobel laureates (Jon Fosse and Patrick Modiano).