Review: Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation

Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation by Umberto Eco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this for my translation book club (https://www.facebook.com/groups/TranslationBooks/), so here are some discussion points/questions I jotted down for discussion:

I retried his Altavista experiment from Chapter 1:
The works of Shakespeare - Le opere di Shakespeare - Shakespeare's works
Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies - Presidente della Camera dei deputati - President of the Chamber of Deputies
Studies in the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce - Studi nella logica di Charles Sanders Peirce - Studien in der Logik von Charles Sanders Peirce - Studies in the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce

Translation and Reference (Chapter 3)
It was very interesting to see how closely he works with his translators, at least in the languages he mentions (English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan). I wonder if it is the same for all languages. It must be so much work to go over all these points with translators in every language.

Chapter 4:
I liked the anecdote about how he disagreed with his English translator (William Weaver), and so Weaver consulted with Eco's wife in order to get a consensus. And she said Eco was wrong!

5: The idea of double-coding, and how much Eco put in his novels, was intriguing. I'm embarrassed to say I caught none of the ones he mentioned from The Island of the Day Before.

6: I confess this was the most intense chapter for me, so I'm not sure how much was over my head. What did you guys think of it?

7: Was I the only one who didn't read Monterroso novel as Eco did? He gives 2 possible scenarios, but neither of them was how I understood it:
"Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavia estaba allì". (When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there).
I understood it to mean that, when the dinosaur woke up, he noticed he was still existing. Did anyone else get that? Would that even make sense in the Spanish version?
Eco said that someone else woke up, and saw that the dinosaur was still there next to him.

8: The discussion on colors reminded me of Guy Deutscher's book "Through the Language Glass", where he discusses how the ancient people didn't seem to have a word for Blue. And in fact, from Eco's discussions it seems like it was an odd color out. I wonder why. I know there's a theory that we have evolved since then to see blue, but apparently that was debunked.

4 stars, but 5 stars if you're a translator because it's pretty much a must-read

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