At university, from the day I enrolled until I earned my PhD, I stressed that no translator thinks, while translating, about which technique they are using at any given moment, as this hiatus irremediably causes a break in the translation act. I stand by my opinion: an aesthetically translated text has a greater impact on the reader, provided it respects the original material.
If the text being dealt with has been translated by a rookie, they will most likely play by the book. At this stage, the translator is afraid to trust their intuition. This is particularly true if they have not cultivated the habit of reading and writing in either the origin or arrival language.
What they do instead is follow the translation techniques taught in traditional translation schools.
Over time, the translator has a responsibility towards themselves, the author, and the text: to trust their inner voice when translating. Since a part of the text dies de facto when crossing from the banks of one language to another, attachment hinders the natural flow of the translation process.
But, if a translator does not nurture this innate ability, if they do not hone their judgement, then even the best technique cannot save them or salvage their text from the misfortune of rigidity.
Is it possible, then, to guess whether an aesthetically beautiful text has been translated by a formally trained translator or a self-taught one?
In theory, you can. In practice, it is much harder.
The best translators bend the rules with such ease it that it does not show.
—R.