This study investigates the importance of empathy in literary translation and aims to prove, from a descriptive standpoint, that empathy is a prominent skill in literary translators. Empathy is defined as the ability to feel with others and understand their perspectives. It is one of the 5 components of Emotional Intelligence (EI), which refers to people’s ability to discern emotional nuances and use their awareness of emotions to better guide their actions. Since literary works are deeply emotive, translators working in this field ought to have a deep understanding of emotions, so that they can accurately convey the emotional dimension of the source text in their translation. This study concludes that literary translators possess a high level of empathy because of the nature of their work which requires them to be avid readers, creative problem-solvers, writers and cultural mediators, all of which are deeply connected with the skill of empathy.