As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. . . . Translation is very much like copying paintings.
Source: Interview in Writers at Work (Second Series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1963). The only interesting sort of translating is that of classics, Pasternak believed.
-- Boris Pasternak, (Feb 10 1890-1960), Russian novelist, poet; His novel Doctor Zhivago helped win him the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1958 but aroused so much opposition at home that he declined the honor.