Lydia Davis on translating the late A.L. Snijders’ short stories:

I continued to work on it, still without a dictionary, “getting” a little more of it each time I read through through it. Simply reading a sentence carefully a second time yielded more understanding—I’m not sure exactly what happens in the brain between the first and the second readings.

– Lydia Davis

More from the Lydia Davis re-reading a sentence files.

Snijders, A.L..Night Train: Very Short Stories. Translated by Lydia Davis, New Directions Publishing, 2021.