As a child he was sent to a bilingual French-English school not because his parents wished to prepare him for a literary career but because of the social prestige of French. He excelled in French because he had a talent for languages, and when he studied them did so diligently. Thus there was no pressing reason why in his twenties he should have learned German, beyond the fact that he had fallen in love with a cousin who lived in Germany; yet he worked up his German to a point where he could not only read the German classics but also write correct if stiff formal German himself. Similarly he learned Spanish well enough to publish a body of Mexican poetry in English translation.
Si alguien conoce los poetas traducidos y de lo que está hablando Coetzee deje la información en los comentarios.
Aunque parece que esta situación tendremos que pedir un "citation needed".