Discussed in this essay:

The Life of Tu Fu, by Eliot Weinberger. New Directions. 64 pages. $13.95.

Translation is an irresistible subject that better writers would do better to resist. It’s too easy to rhapsodize over, theorize onto, sentimentalize at (pick your preposition). There are very few excellent books on the practice that meaningfully address its rich complexity. My favorite heftier entry is The Craft and Context of Translation, edited by William Arrowsmith and Roger Shattuck, published in 1961 by the University of Texas Press. The anthology grew out of a symposium on translation held…