The purpose if this paper is to consider to what extent empathy between the author and the translator influences the translation activity. In other words, the article analyses the influence of the translator’s knowledge about the author’s life and work on the results of the translation. Literary translators often declare that the way they tackle many of the difficulties they face is based to a great extent on this unconcretizable feeling of empathy with the author, an aspect which is not considered in normative texts. According to this article, the wider and deeper the knowledge of the author is, the more the translator will be in a position to anticipate, at least in theory, the attitudes which will never occur in his work.