The acoustics of the text is so much of what matters in a translation and so little of what people usually talk about: translations are always reviewed and praised or criticized in terms of their accuracy, or perhaps faithfulness, when the sound of the thing is what makes or breaks it.
“Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.”
James Baldwin | Giovanni’s Room