I have known Lee Kuan Yew well for some 45 years, ever since he came to Harvard for a lecture.I have huge admiration and respect for him and can state without equivocation that I cconsider hime one of the most able, foresighted and analytical global leaders of the last century. With his eyes still on the future, Lee consented to the publication of these very personal interviews in order to educated the rising generation, too young to have experienced Singapore's difficult history, about the hard choices he made, ones they, too, will have to confront. These are valuable lessons for all nations in the interesting and illuminating book.
——Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going
读名著，学翻译。以上这段文字节选自《Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going》。
文学名著的翻译相当于译者的二次创作，为了保持语言的文学性和可读性，译者需要在保持原著意思不变的情况下，考虑译著后作品的受众，以受众最能理解的方式翻译外文作品，同时让译文看起来并无“外文”痕迹。为此，文学作品的译作者往往需要选择性地删除一些直译过来显得生硬、丢掉又不影响原文表达的语句，并增添上一些必要的、能够辅助读者理解原文的词句。
以以上这段译文为例，译者进行了以下取舍：
1、admiration and respect，译者只选取了respect作为翻译。其实，二者的意思虽有差别但却相近，英文中常用近义词来表达同一意思，是为了增加文章的可读性，所以，为了保证译文通顺流畅，在翻译时选择性地删减同义词是可行的。
2、I can state without equivocation that I cconsider...译者删除了这句话。笔者认为，原因之一在于这句话本无实质内容，其要点在于后面引导的从句；其二，则是因为缅文常常省略主语，不似英文中I, you等人称代词出现频率很高，缅文中则较少出现。
3、for all nations译者进行了扩充翻译：စကၤာပူအတြက္သာမက နိုင္ငံအားလုံး အတြက္。这样翻译更符合缅文的行文习惯，也更具有吸引力。
由此可见，翻译绝不仅仅只是意思的传达，译者更是肩负了让读者易于理解的责任。不论是取是舍，只要能够将原著的精髓传达给读者，就算是殊途同归了。