Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat...where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, American novelist, poet, and essayist, Reciprocity of Prose and Poetry