Benjamin Moser talks about finding a somewhat old library of English books and how he began to change his opinion of translating world authors into English.

In recent years we have seen writers outside English become global phenomena: Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Haruki Murakami. But such a literary life, the popularity owed to translation, began to seem a little fake to me. And when I read Mizumura I found myself agreeing that, strictly speaking, literary universality does not exist. The books I loved were, after all, about something, not everything. But even in practical and commercial terms, the prominence of English created more losers than winners, favoring, like so many other forms of globalization, a handful of instantly recognizable and inoffensive brands. 

…

Translation — not the thing but the unquestioned emphasis on its virtue — started to feel to me like another philistinism masquerading as worldliness.

By worldliness, Moser means people travel the world–or read from around the world–and they start to think they own the place.

Micah Mattix discusses the essay in the latest Prufrock email, saying maybe readers or literary opinion makers should lighten up a bit. “A healthy curiosity is a virtue, of course, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying a work on its own.”