JM Coetzee has had his work translated into many languages. “The necessary imperfection of translation – brought about in the first place by the incapacity of any given target language to supply for each single word in the source language a corresponding single word that would cover, precisely and without overlap, the denotation of the original and its major connotations to boot – is so widely accepted that the translator becomes accustomed to aiming for the best possible translation rather than a hypothetical perfect one. But there are occasions where less than perfect translation of a key word can have serious consequences.”