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.

I always hesitate to say that something is lifelike.

I really had wanted to learn Italian for a long time. I think ever since - or even maybe even before I had read Dante. And I just sort of had this idea that I wanted to read Dante in Italian. And then in my office, we actually had a class - an Italian class.

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

I think that being an editor, someone who works with words, is very good training for being a translator because it trains you to be attentive to words in a very specific, very concrete, very literal way.

To have the translator be a figure in the book's presentation seems like a big thing, especially for a book that's really popular.

One naturally identifies to some extent with an "I" female narrator going through something that you recognize whether you've gone through it or not.