A perfect example

Sometimes students who miss the point provide you with a perfect example. Today one such example showed up in my translation class.

Russian doesn't have articles - either definite or indefinite. Of course it has ways to express the concept of definiteness, but no articles. For some reason, getting novice translators to supply the appropriate English article is very difficult - they're very prone to using "a" and don't like "the".

Aleksandr Arkhangelsky opens a column examining the life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the likelihood of another like him coming along by saying

Прощание с Александром Солженицыным прошло достойно. Как была достойна его жизнь. Хоронили писателя без официальной помпы и без лишнего народного любопытства. (Our farewell to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was conducted worthily - as was his life. They buried the writer without official pomp and without excessive public prying curiosity. )

My student wrote "They buried a writer..."

Brrr. It sounds like a human sacrifice.

It's the writer. It's Solzhenitsyn. Not just a writer, some guy who happened to be there.