Reading the same author in two different translations — if the author wrote in a language you don't read — is one of the best ways to understand what translation is actually doing. You can see where the translators agree, which is probably close to what the original says, and where they diverge, which is where the interpretation is happening.

I've read Proust in three partial translations and the opening paragraph of Swann's Way is a useful test case. C.K. Scott Moncrieff's version is formal and musical. Lydia Davis's version is more direct and slightly stranger. The differences reveal how many choices are embedded in every sentence and how different sensibilities produce different books.

This exercise made me more grateful for every translation I read, because it made visible the labor and judgment that go into turning one language into another.