Translation in Practice book The translation of literary fiction demands much more than knowledge of two or more languages. An ability to convert words literally from one language to another is the most basic skill required by any translator; but those who translate literary fiction require something beyond this—something much more creative, involving an instinctive understanding of the way that words and phrases can work together to best effect, in order to reveal both the story and the subtle nuances that create its context and apparent intent. As Palestinian poet and journalist Mahmoud Darwish puts it in the preface to Poésie: La terre nous est étroite: ‘The translator is not a ferryman for the meaning of the words but the author of their web of new relations. And he is not the painter of the light part of the meaning, but the watcher of the shadow, and what it suggests.’