What Makes A Literary Translation Great?

I concur with [@Flopsi], especially regarding Wolfgang and Bertram’s translations which are so good, they are inspiring.

“MagicMulder always seems to go to the core, dig it out to tell us what's it all about.”

So do you Andrea and for that I also really enjoy reading your translations.

Hello BlueBird, thank you for starting this interesting discussion. As a bilingual person from birth on I think that a translation first has to render the meaning of what was said or written. But with literature things get more complicated, and I am not the person to translate books; sometimes I try poems on this site, but I only can translate them, when I get the meaning. Mostly I translate songs thinking, that people just want to know: "what is she/he singing about?" and I try to stick to the words. And I am a fan of the retranslation into the original language.
Another thing is: making translations from translation, what happens on this site. Many times mistranslations from the first translation are translated! So in my opinion people who do translate should know the original language well.

Thanks @BlueBird for this topic. What makes a translation great? I really don't have anything substantial to add to what the ten professional translators and Katy Derbyshire say about it.
For me, translating is a craft. It starts with having a good command of both languages. The translation must be 'correct' in the way that Blue Bird has described:

That is difficult enough. It is even more difficult when it comes to poetry. (Prose is not allowed on LT.) Good poetry evokes what cannot be said directly.
How do you do that in another language? And how much freedom do you take? With these 'how' questions, I adopt the view of a craftsman. If you want to be a poet in the first place, why do you translate? On the other hand, it requires great sensitivity to convey the indefinable and unsayable in a translation. So a translator of poetry must have a touch of a poet in him or her.

For me, the source always comes first, so I want to stay as close to the text as possible. In many translations on LT more liberty is taken. When it comes to the question whether a translation is great, the reader is the judge. But "the reader" does not exist. As @florbox rightly said, "Greatness is in the eye of the beholder". But there is more to be said to it in my opinion. That has been done in the article, that BlueBird has provided. For instance:
David Colmar: "A good translation is something to aspire to and, in this perfectionist’s profession, a good translation is never good enough."
Alex Zucker: "But it does mean that I don’t have the liberty to write a “strange” work when the author’s was “normal”, or “normalise” the writing when the author meant to be unorthodox. If I do, the result may still be “good”, but rather than a translation, it might be more accurate to call it an adaptation."
Ros Schwartz: "a good translation sings"
Saskia Vogel: "When translations don’t feel like they have been written – where the reader becomes too aware of the mechanics of the writing – and simply ‘are’ that’s when they’re good."
Julia Sherwoord: "a piece of music that has been arranged for different instruments but evokes an emotional response as close to the effect of the original as possible".
OK, these are metaphors, but doesn't it say enough?
A translator also reads his or her own translation (preferably several times before publication). With good sensitivity one can sense what the translation will evoke in most readers. That is the beauty of language: it cannot only communicate facts, but can also evoke associations, connotations and emotional values. Translating poems is something for perfectionists. The perfect translation does not exist. What a translator wants is therefore unattainable. But that's no reason not to try. He or she might even make a great translation.

Hi, sorry I started different answer. I see, thank you for your explanation.
I was trying to answer this question. "What do you think makes a translation 'correct'? What makes it 'great'?"

I found many people believing that when it comes to new line, they differentiate previous story. Which is very wrong.

For me there's basically three levels (that are not necessarily ranked in that order):

Level 1 is a translation that is syntactically correct and is a sufficiently clear representation of the source. It refrains from too much interpretation and tries to let the reader draw their own conclusion.
Metaphors are translated into the respective metaphor of the target language.
This usually fails if the source is very poetic and heavily uses complex imagery.

Ex. "X stand behind the mic like Walter Cronkite" => "XZibit stands behind the mic like Walter Cronkite, [footnote: A famous US news anchor]"

Level 2 is a translation that conveys an interpretation of images/metaphors in the source. This can be clearer than (1), especially if source metaphors don't easily translate to a target metaphor but has the disadvantage that nuances and multi-layered meanings can get lost.

Ex. "X stand behind the mic like Walter Cronkite" => "XZibit stands behind the mic like [name of a famous news anchor in the countries where the target language is spoken]"

Level 3 is what I'd call a re-creation in the literal sense - one work of art translated into another work of art. This is for example what happens with the "equirhythmic rhyming singable" trifecta.

I used to write mostly level 1 translations (and the occasional level 3 if I felt creative) but have switched to level 2 where the source is really tricky (though it requires a bunch of footnotes sometimes). You can't really translate Red Hot Chili Peppers without some degree of interpretation, for example.

A good example for representing vs. interpreting is https://lyricstranslate.com/en/creedence-clearwater-revival-who039ll-sto...
An interpreting translation would for example translate "Long as I remember the rain been comin' down" as "Bad times have been going on for as long as I can remember".

As for recreation, it's indeed a broad issue. Hofstadter's book talks at length about whether to translate "S. Pereulok" in Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" as "S. Lane", or to use external knowledge to resolve the abbreviation into a full name, and/or whether to translate the full name or keep it as a proper name. And whether it may be proper to move the entire action from Saint Petersburg to, say, London in the process.

The topic is "What makes a literary translation great?". Both of you are talking about the craft of translating. That is important, but not the whole story. I will put my ten cents in.
As for the ideological choice between domestication vs. foreignization I take the view that domestication is wrong, because it underestimates the reader. And let there be some challenge for the reader to dive into the culture of the source language.
As for the two examples of @magicmulder I am with @Bluebird. The first example is not an interpretation, but an explanation. That is underestimating the reader. The second example is, I agree, an extreme case of domestication.

In my opinion one should stay as close to the source text as possible. Or else it will become an adaptation, which is fine. But please don't present it then as a translation. Where do you draw the line, indeed?
I think there is no general answer. In each particular case each individual reader decides for himself or herself and maybe reads a great translation.