Yet conference interpreter Anne Pearce emphatically disagrees. Pearce claims that there is nothing glamorous about conference interpretation, which is viewed as being the work of a "multilingual secretary." The dichotomies between translation and interpretation, between literary translation and literary interpretation, cannot be denied, though. Even if they become political arguments related to power, hierarchy, and social class status, these arguments reveal the complexities inherent in translating works of literature. Poetry perhaps presents the most serious problems related to literary interpretation. Most poetry cannot be translated in the same way a tourist brochure can be translated, line for line, concept for concept. The interpreter must have a full mastery of the language to the point of understanding its metaphors and the subconscious minds of the people inhabiting that culture...

Literature does have a qualitatively different need when it is being translated; it must be interpreted so that the semantics match the new language. The interpreter captures the essence of the original text and cloaks it with new language, preserving as best as possible the intention and meaning -- insofar as that preservation is even possible. However, the difference between literary and non-literary interpretation does not necessarily imply a hierarchy. There is no need to imply that literary interpretation is qualitatively more important, or more worthy of research than non-literary translation or even literary translation as opposed to literary interpretation. As Zlateva points out, the theory is different from the practice anyway: "Nobody expects literary theory to teach people how to write novels or poems but, for some reason, a lot of people seem to think that translation theory is for teaching translators how to translate."