"Send it all to the devil" is idiomatic in the Russian but has no obvious English equivalent. Each of the translators above handles the idiom differently. Glenny prioritizes the colloquial quality of the original Russian and uses a colloquial British word ("chuck"). Bugin riffs on the English colloquialism "go to hell" to make the idiom more accessible to the reader. Pevear and Volokhonsky prioritize the language of the original, maybe hoping to retain the reference to the devil, since the devil plays a big part in the rest of the novel. All three approaches are valid and tell us about the translator's approach to the text.

What this can tell us:
Rabassa chose to use an idiomatic phrase in English to translate the figurative Spanish, possibly to better connect with the English reader, to transmit something about the Spanish word, or to fit with the surrounding imagery. Some idioms, usually the less complicated ones, can be introduced in translation as a way to make a word from the original that is otherwise difficult to translate be more approachable to the reader. Whether the idiom is in the original text or a result of translation, it is often evidence of the translator's work.

Why It Matters:
The phrases "Even as he walked" and "began discharging its bouguet" are unusual in their structure. Another translator might have said: "The fragrance of the fruit filled the hallway as he walked." "Particles of fragrance" seem to be in this sentence to allow for the verb "to infuse," again an unusual way to describe the scene.

John Nathan could have translated this little scene and the smell of grapefruit filling a hallway in a more familiar way, as is evidenced by other paragraphs in this novel. We can assume he chose to preserve the specificity of this syntax and imagery for a reason, and that at least some of the elements that we find unfamiliar come directly from the original Japanese.

When translators leave clauses or words in a peculiar order or use odd structures for familiar phrases, they are often mirroring, consciously or not, the syntax of the original language. Russian sentences can be arranged in any order without it seeming odd. Note the em-dash in the original--used slightly differently in Russian than in English and so posing another syntactical problem for the translation. As translators work to solve these problems, they leave behind traces, such as the slightly awkward clause structure of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. The frequency and shape of these awkward sentences can help us to trace the language of the original and the process of translation. This is also a clue about what the translator is choosing to prioritize in the original text.

Spivak has complex reasons for leaving the words fatwa, meaning official ruling, murtad, meaning apostate or abandoned, and dorra, meaning whiplash, in the poem unstranslated, reasons she enumerates in her book An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. She argues that the latter two words, murtad and dorra, come from what to her is an inaccessible version of Bengali. She did not feel that she had the right to impose meaning on them. Still, she left them untranslated even when their meanings became accessible to her.

With the words left untranslated, we experience the poem as an object from a different culture, one that does not have to be fully accessible to us in order for us to engage with it. We can, with a little work, intuit the poem's sense (fatwa is familiar enough and the context around the other words gives some hints). The untranslated language retains a certain power by remaining unknown to us.

This Japanese word, Watatsumi-no-Mikoto, is included as part of a gloss, which gives both the original word and the definition. Meredith Weatherby could have chosen to omit the Japanese word in favor of the definition (god of the sea), but chose instead to add the definition while leaving the original word in place.

The inclusion of Watatsumi-no-Mikoto, though it does not add to the meaning, works to keep us grounded in the Japanese language and culture. Meredith Weatherby translates the word for us, so we experience its meaning in the context of the story, even while she retains the sound and rhythm of the original Japanese (many Japanese placenames are mentioned in this section of the novel).