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Jeannie Erdal, Tiger's Ghost, in  Hidden Histories, Granta 85,

To be any good as a translator you have to do a kind of disappearing
act.  I liked being invisible, absorbing the text and living with it a
little, then turning it into something new -- unique but not original,
creative, but not inventive.  p.136

The literary treatment of sex is beset with vexed questions.  First
there is the problem of getting the characters to take their clothes
off -- buttons and zips and hooks can be so awkward, and you couldn't
ever allow a man to keep his socks on.  Then there are the body parts
which either have to be named (very unwise) or else replaced with
dubious symbolism.  And what about the verbs, the doing words? How can
you choose to make people enter, writhe, thrash, smoulder, grind,
merge, thrust  and still hope to salvage a smidgen of self-respect?
Not easily.  If you doubt me, try it.  The sound effects are even
worse -- squealing, screaming, the shriek of coitus.  No, the
English language does not lend itself to realistic descriptions of sex.

	[different cultures have different traditions regarding the bounds on
	 what is acceptable in literary descriptions of sex. From Chaucer to
	 Chatterley, English itself has changed considerably in this respect.
	 For an illuminating discussion on the constraints for describing sex
	 in ancient sanskrit poetics, see Daniel H. Ingalls
	 introduction to sambhoga poetry from Vidyakara's 
	 subhAsitaratnakosa, 1965:

	   In dealing with love, both physical and emotional, the Sanskrit
	   poet sought always to avoid vulgarity. ... Words that refer to 
	   bodily functions are avoided (cf. Mammata's kAvyaprakAsha,
	   "light of poetry", 177, on Sutra 47) unless they are to be used
	   metaphorically. Clouds may spit lightning but when humans spit the
	   poet must turn away. 

	   The Sanskrit poet was chiefly interested in the sentimental or
	   emotional development of sex. [But] he regularly describes
	   sufficient physical details to form a base for the non-physical
	   development. ... Kisses (594) and embraces (580) are described, but so
	   is intercourse itself (560, 576, 577, 582, etc.). It is the
	   physical descriptions of the ultimate aim of sex that troubled the
	   scholars of the Victorian age and prompted the irascible
	   Fitzedward Hall to his censure of Subandhu as "no better, at the
	   very best, than a specious savage." 
	   
	   But one should note that the description ... remains strictly
	   within bounds ...  the sexual organs themselves may not be
	   mentioned even indirectly.  There is [a constant reference] to
	   sweating and [goose-flesh], symptoms which seem to a European far
	   from poetic.

Patrick Hanan also discusses a few points on what was acceptable in chinese
literary tradition in his introduction to The Carnal Prayer Mat

Contents

	from http://www.granta.com/Magazine/85
Orhan Pamuk: A Religious Conversion
Diana Athill: Alive, Alive-Oh!
J. Robert Lennon: Eight Pieces for the Left Hand
Brian Cathcart: The Lives of Brian
Jackie Kay: You Go When You Can No Longer Stay
Daniel Smith: The Surgery of Last Resort
David J. Spear: Good Father
Jennie Erdal: Tiger’s Ghost
Giles Foden: White Men’s Boats
T. C. Boyle: Femme Fatale
Jonathan Tel: Put Not Thy Trust in Chariots
Geoffrey Beattie: Protestant Boy
Anne Enright: Shaft

Repressed personal experiences, neglected battles, forgotten civilizations
are offered in Granta 85-an issue that excavates the unfairly buried event,
the secret life, the overlooked war. With Diana Athill on losing her baby,
Amit Chaudhuri on the Indian tailor who became the face of a riot, Giles
Foden on the origins of "The African Queen," plus new fiction by T. C. Boyle
and Anne Enright.