The art of translation: Discussing the art form with International Booker Prize judge Sophie Hughes

The Ship of Theseus paradox, which has sparked debate for thousands of years, centers on the Greek hero switching out each decaying plank of wood on his ship for a new one. The question of identity and change arises: Can we say the new version is still, functionally, the same ship? Or, more crucially, did replacing the ship's planks significantly change its identity?

Works of literary translation have, at times, been compared to this paradox. If all the words are new, does the text retain its identity? Debates on this question differ based on a work’s form. The discourse around translated poetry, for instance, is different from that around translated prose.

Over the years, the conversation around the art and labour of literary translation has evolved from that of what is lost to that of what is interpreted, transformed, and gained to serve the original narrative.

This World Book Day, Euronews Culture speaks with Sophie Hughes, 2026 International Booker Prize judge and the most nominated translator in the history of the prize. We talked about the art of literary translation, translators’ roles in creating international communities of readers and writers, and the future of the practice.

Euronews Culture: Since the creation of the International Booker Prize nearly a decade ago, the prize has highlighted translated fiction from around the world, awarding both authors and translators. Why has it been important to award both of these figures?

Sophie Hughes: It really is true to say that a translated book is one that has been written twice. It’s hard to overstate how painstaking and creative the work of a literary translator is. Two distinct languages aren’t just a little bit different from one another – they’re extremely, often utterly different. This means that the words you read in translations are the translator’s words, even if they are chosen with the author’s words in mind.

Translators, like all readers, also interpret. Translators constantly make decisions on behalf of the author and also the future reader, holding both in mind. If a novel is 60,000 words long, and the two languages have no shared lexicon, that’s at least 60,000 decisions per book. But of course, it’s many, many more than that when you consider syntax, punctuation, spelling, dialect, intention, tone, linguistic conventions, cultural conventions, English variants, and the list goes on.

This is why it is so meaningful that the International Booker Prize, which brings the Booker Prizes’ renown and popularity, holds up the translator as a form of co-author, to be awarded half the prize money, but also half of the acclaim for producing a work of outstanding literary merit.

How does translation affect the literary process and the impact of a finished work?

The translator and judge for the International Booker Prize 2017, Daniel Hahn, wrote that translators have to “write exactly the same book - exactly the same - while using none of the same words”. In other words, translation transforms texts. Thankfully, though, in the last two decades, we have moved away from discussions of what gets lost in translation, to instead appreciate what is gained.

First and most obviously, many readers gain access to books they otherwise couldn’t read. Publishing contemporary fiction from all over the globe widens the view and enhances the quality of conversation (and even debate) we are all having about the world, from the most topical news stories, to inherited or intrenched assumptions about people and places we don’t know.

There is also plenty to be gained on the page itself. I love the story about how Samuel Beckett, having written the short story "Sans"originally in French, for his self-translation found that English’s particular malleability allowed him to ditch the preposition for what he considered to be the far more metaphysically rich "Lessness". When he went back to adapt the original title, he apparently found "there was no noun in French capable of expressing absence in itself." The translation improved the original. This isn’t a rare phenomenon!

How does the work of translators affect the broader community of readers and writers?

All of the professional translators I know are extremely passionate readers, and passion is infectious. In great part thanks to the Internet, today’s translators don’t only translate the words themselves, they also pitch writers either new or new to English-language publishers and promote their work to readers in essays and interviews and at book events.

Rendering meaning and tone is extremely important. As Edith Grossman, the great translator of Asterix and other masterpieces once wrote, "fidelity is our noble purpose". But I also think of today’s translators as the very best in our community at communicating simple excitement for a book or writer. For readers wishing to expand their horizons, to read stories set beyond the confines of their own life, our purpose is also to be very reliable, really knowledgeable scouts.

Are there any translations that have been particularly memorable for how they captured the original work? Are there instances where translations have gone wrong?

Regarding things going wrong, precisely because translation involves an act of readerly interpretation, it’s easy to look across an original and someone’s translation and say: “That’s not what that means!” or: “There’s a better word for this!” But we’re sort of asking for the joy to be sucked out of reading translations if we approach it like this.

I think a successful translated work leaves no trace of what the writer Lina Mounzer once described to me as the “the laboured agony” of translation. All 13 books on this year’s International Booker Prize longlist boast memorable translations, all for different reasons: from particularly zippy dialogue, to exquisite lyrical flourishes; from unfalteringly rhythmic sentences, to laugh-out-loud punchlines and clever puns. And they all, without exception, make it look easy, a reliable mark of a great translation.

Has the conversation about the art of translation and the role of translators in the literary process changed over the last decade?

It has changed almost beyond recognition. Going back even further, the 1990s saw a “cultural turn” in the reception and study of translation, with an increased focus on the status of culture in translation and the acknowledgement that countries don’t only have their own language or languages, but their own cultural beliefs, customs and values, none of which can be separated from the stories being written there. The widely held notion of an ideal translator’s neutrality was blasted, and their necessarily personal, subjective interpretation acknowledged.

In the last decade, we’ve moved on again, from acceptance of this subjectivity to a celebration of it: translators, rightly, are often compared to actors interpreting a playwright’s or screenwriter’s part. More and more literary prizes like the International Booker Prize recognize this, and, as a result, more readers have stopped making a distinction between reading in translation and reading books first written in English. Recent data shows that sales of translated fiction in the UK have increased steadily in recent years, and, most promisingly, there is particularly strong engagement from 25–34 year-olds.

With advancements in technology, particularly AI tools and translation software, do you believe the role of human translators in the creative process will change?

It has changed and more change is surely coming, as in most industries. For instance, there has been an increase in publishers hiring translators to ‘back translate’ literary works (to edit texts first translated by a machine software), in the name of economic efficiency.

As someone who read 128 works of variously hilarious, strange, richly ambiguous, linguistically playful, intelligent, wildly imaginative, achingly human literature in translation this year as an International Booker Prize 2026 judge, I predict with some confidence that we are still a very long way away from machines adequately translating literature from scratch, or from most publishers of literature entertaining the idea of replacing human translators.

At present, the models that this software relies on allows them to “read” in a reasoned, generalized way - but who goes to the library or bookshop looking for a generalised, purely reasoned literature? Most of us seek human connection, stories that are felt. To return to my point about translators being writers, if you prefer your writers human, you’re better off sticking with human translators, too.

The winning book of The International Booker Prize 2026 will be announced on Tuesday 19 May at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.

The shortlist for this year's prize is: Daniel Kehlmann ("The Director" - Translated by Ross Benjamin); Marie NDiaye ("The Witch" - Translated by Jordan Stump); Yáng Shuāng-zǐ ("Taiwan Travelogue" - Translated by Lin King); Ana Paula Maia ("On Earth As It Is Beaneath" - Translated by Padma Viswanathan); Rene Karabash ("She Who Remains" - Translated by Izidora Angel); and Shida Bazyar ("The Nights Are Quiet In Tehran" - Translated by Ruth Martin).