&gt; Everybody admires his extremely deep knowledge of the Italian language and its nuisances, I would even dare to say &quot;unrivaled&quot; in our present day.<p>I always found it strange that in the U.S., conversations about, say, Foucault&#x27;s Pendulum, don&#x27;t really touch on the fact that people are reading a translation and not the original work. The vast majority of the readers probably wouldn&#x27;t even be able to tell you the name of the translator.<p>I always wonder how different the translation is from the original, and how different it would be from other possible translations. I remember looking at different translations of Lysistrata and feeling like they were almost completely different plays.