Literary translation is an art of interpretation of written literary text from the original language into a different, target language. Literary translation is in some ways, an odd artistic process; where translators do pretty much exactly the same thing as the original writer of the piece.

When translating from a foreign language, a translator usually creates a new text. However, not all literary translation products have the same meaning as in the original language. In addition, translated literary texts should not only show the overall thoughts of words but should also be felt by their audience.

Not all translators have the capability to translate any literary art products. This is because, one of the main important qualifications in hiring literary translators is that they should be writers as well. Thus, literary works are actually not only being translated, but a literary work is also being created again in the process.

Literary translation is usually regarded as the most difficult of translation to make and thus, it has a significant difference from any other type of translation, as it should not only reproduce the original in a more or less word for word translation, but it should also convey the original meaning of the text from the original language.

Obviously, people enjoy reading a good translated literary work if people literally understand the whole content of the text, without realizing that the text had been translated from a foreign language.

The thing is, there several factors that are needed to be considered in order to translate literary works into the target language effectively. Translating text from one language to another depends on the subtext that accurately corresponds to the national culture of the target language.

Due to the multilingualism of the world, there is a high demand for language translation and interpreting services. However, as the translation market is growing, many linguists are trying to prepare themselves to qualify in the translation industry. Hence, most clients have misconceptions in choosing for the right translator for their documents, which usually results in a poor translation document product.

However, even though translation and interpreting services are a rising trend in the world today, there is also a crisis of literary translation nowadays. It is not because literary arts, such as poetry and theatre play are not significant in the education and learning of people today, but because there is a shortage of qualified literary translators who are interested in performing literary translation.

Literary translation is however unique; most linguists believe that among any other type of translation, literary translation, has the most complex process. It does not only require the accurateness of the translation, but it requires high creativity and passion of the translator. Thus, literary translation should not be neglected, for its significance is of great value to people’s lives.