Since it began the translation fellowships in 1981, the NEA has awarded 550 fellowships to 487 translators, with translations representing 78 languages and 88 countries. To celebrate the agency’s large investment in translation, the NEA created a publication, The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation, in which 19 translators and advocates of translation illuminate the challenges of bringing new voices to American audiences.

As Amy Stolls, NEA director of Literature, stated in the introduction, “Our goal for this book was simple: to illuminate for the general reader the art and importance of translation through a variety of points of view. Each essay tells a different story; each story adds to our understanding of this little-known art form.”

The essays address a variety of subjects, from why the writers became literary translators to the mechanics of creating a good translation to the value of translation. One of the common themes through the essays was the ability of translation to help us understand other cultures and ways of thought. As translator Johanna Warren noted in her essay, “To come to deeply empathize with a person you have never met, who was born into circumstances so different from your own, is the sweetest possible fruit of communication. That this can be the result of reading a book is a testament to the necessity of translation and the power of literature in general.”

The range of contributors is from relatively new translators like Warren and Angela Rodel to well-known translators Howard Goldblatt, Pierre Joris, and Natasha Wimmer, as well as publishers like Dalkey Archive’s John O’Brien and Open Letter Books’ Chad Post, and advocates like Olivia E. Sears of the Center for the Art of Translation and Susan Harris of Words without Borders. In addition to the essays, each contributor offered their three favorite translations—not necessarily the canonical translations, but ones that the essayists thought highly of and wanted to share.