All translators sometimes write absurd things. A good editor surveys the work we did with an eagle eye. I stopped at Fowles. If I were told it was written by an Augustian-Franciscan theologian, I would get the point. If I set about Spanish literature, it will be Juan de la Cruz whom I will translate.
Inspiration is an essential thing, of course.
A translator devotes his energies to an author, as if dissolving completely in a book. Figuratively speaking, if a translator doesn't kill himself in himself, just as an icon painter kills the artist in himself, he wouldn't be able to work. There are several kinds of translators. There are those who translate literally. When one reads Nabokov translated by Golyshev, one can't believe this was originally written in English, not in Russian.