Translators as Readers

I like to think I’m always a fairly close reader, but I’ve noticed over the years that I seem to get more out of a text when I’m translating it. That’s not really surprising, considering how translators have to pay close attention to every aspect of a text in terms of both meaning and form, but it does make me wonder how translators develop such good reading skills and whether this can be taught, and also whether translators might in some situations make better critics than those who don’t work with language in the same way (obviously, some writers, too, may be good critics, but there are plenty of people who write book reviews but do not seem to have much writing or translating experience themselves).