Natasha Wimmer, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and 2666, is interviewed over at Granta:

How much did you have to get absorbed in the atmosphere of the book, and how did you achieve that?

NW: If you mean did I have to dim the lights and put on Barry White, I hate to disappoint you. I won’t say that the mood of a scene doesn’t affect me, but I’m not the translating equivalent of a Method actor. And luckily, I don’t think that Bolaño’s fiction – even the sex scenes – requires the translator’s own fiction.