On translating Madame Bovary

Adam Thorpe is the author of Ulverton, one of the novels in the ORF project. He has also just published a translation of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Although he is concerned specifically with the problems of translating Flaubert's French prose into English, his thoughts on the responsibilities of the literary translator should be of interest to all our readers. This article was originally published in The Guardian newspaper. We are grateful for permission to reprint it.