Anyone speak a foreign language? What authors do you consider to be difficult or impossible to translate. For English there's a lot but mainly - with the exception of Shakespeare, that's given - I'd say Joyce and Fitzgerald (for prose). And Goethe, especially Goethe, and Kafka for German. I've heard Flaubert in French is great and Gogol and Pushkin for Russian are also great. This is a subject the interests me a lot, I'm really thinking of learning Russian...Nabokov's college lectures have convinced me it's worth the struggle. Can anyone comment on this?