It was interesting to read Nigel Nicolson in the Sunday Telegraph recently on the business of translation, particularly on how much we supposedly lose in reading translations of the classics.

Nicolson related how he remarked to a fluent Russian speaker that he was half-way through Anna Karenina, and asked if she thought he was losing much by reading it in English. "Everything", was the reply. He could not agree, and quoted the following:

"I'm a bad woman, a wicked woman", thought Anna, "but I don't like lying, while he lives on it. He knows all about it, he sees it all - but what does he care! If he were to kill me, if he were to kill Vronsky, I might respect him. . ."

The "he" is Anna's husband, and the extract is from Rosemary Edmond's version in the Penguin edition. Nicolson says: "It is exactly how a faithless, distraught woman of any nation would think and talk when her infidelity was discovered. It rings true in translation. . ."

How Nigel Nicolson (or anyone else) could presume to know how women from all over the world would think and talk in such a situation is beyond me. It must be that he is even more sophisticated, or travelled, or both, than hitherto suspected. I will say nothing about faithful translations of original texts, but perhaps the above is a case where an unfaithful translation is the only one appropriate.

Meanwhile out on Inishmaan the other day, local celebrity, Dara Beag, read out his poem written in honour of Mary McAleese and her visit to the island. I would be most interested in seeing the Irish original because the English gist of it, as reported in the Irish Times, is pretty dull, and having heard Dara Beag declaim in public on Inishmaan more than once (I can vouch for the fact that) there is nothing dull about him or his poetry.

In contrast, the Welsh poet Nigel Jenkins has published a bilefilled poem attacking the recently deceased politician, George Thomas, Lord Tonypandy - "the Lord of Lickspit, the grovelsome brown-snout and smiley shyster. . ." What is of interest here, apart from the superbly bad taste of the thing, is that Jenkins has appended to the poem the credit line, "Somewhat after the Irish, via Patrick Galvin, of Sean Murch adha na Raithineach, 1700-62".

The poem is creation, rather than translation, yet debt is honestly admitted: perhaps it is time to coin the term "crosslation". The credit is highly appropriate too, given that the Cork-born writer Patrick Galvin, in one of his poems, Statement on the Burn- ing of Cork, concluded his "adaptation" from the Irish with the line "Tis bloody fabulous!"

Robert Frost said that poetry is what gets lost in translation. If this is true we should surely favour as much translation as possible, so that as much poetry as possible can be lost, there being far too much of it, mostly of dreadful quality. I can think of many alleged poets whose entire work could be happily lost to the world by the process of translation. The only danger is the distinct possibility of such dreadful poetry gaining in translation.

But we may have to approach the poets carefully. In some cultures there is a resistance to translation - taboos surround the translation of certain texts, usually material of a religious nature, or poems which provide an intimate look within the culture. Some Navajo poets apparently resist all attempts to have their work translated, seeing their poetry as communication between tribesmen, and not for potential exploitation by the white man - though the latter is of course at liberty to learn the Navajo language.

I am not going to get into the sociological, or more dangerous, the ideological aspects of translation. Neither am I going to declare for the polysystems school (whereby all literature is regarded as a single vast system) or dare to put in a word one way or another for the alleged importance of the extratextual factors.

But the whole business of translation is now big business, and "Translation Studies" have been accepted in their own right as a valuable and worthwhile discipline (having long been looked down on as mere hack-work), one which is offered in many universities.

Those interested in an Irish angle should turn to Michael Cronin's well-received book, Translating Ireland (Cork University Press, £30), published last year. Despite the title, this is not an attempt to move Ireland elsewhere (directly translating from the Latin, you understand), but is a history of translation theory and practice in Ireland from the Middle Ages to the present day.