It's one of the hardest things to translate anything that's not standard.

That's a huge subject - a writer refusing to do publicity but writing about publicity.

I tend to be kind of literal about translation. I think it's important to present the writer as closely as possible.

I think that if you are sticking to the text, essentially, you're not trying to write your own version of it. I mean, of course, it is your own version of it. And every translator would probably have a different version. But I think that that's what keeps the writers from being individual in English. They may be my English, but I don't think that Ferrante sounds like Levi.

As the writer, you can choose the word that seems best in terms of meaning, nuance, sound, etc. As the translator you are unlikely to find a word in your language that exactly matches, so that you are always making a decision about which meaning or nuance to choose, or emphasize, over the others.

It's one of the hardest things to translate anything that's not standard.

I think that physical actions are always hard to describe, to translate.