Review: Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book for the Translation Book Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TranslationBooks

This wasn't as entertaining as I hoped it would be, but should probably be required reading for anyone who wishes to take translation seriously. It contains a lot of the history of translation and reasons behind the things we do, and it goes through many of the intricacies of translation and interpreting for organizations like the European Union, etc. 

If you think you might be interested in translation, start with "Through the Language Glass" by Guy Deutscher. If you are already committed to translation, read this book. 

Some of my notes:

"The translator's job is to express the force of the utterance in those particular circumstances in forms appropriate to the target language and culture. Whether or not the chosen form of words corresponds to the sentence-meaning of the sentence that Jim uttered is beside the point".  

(p. 70)

'It's complicated' would be "C'est compliqué" in French. But the 2009 movie "It's complicated" (Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep) was translated as "Pas si simple". Why? Because it worked much better in terms of the movie. In fact, in Spanish it was "No es tan facil". In Italian, it was "E' complicato", but I wonder if it would have been better as "Non è così facile" or something. 

(Taken from p. 79)

"To know a language is to know how to say the same thing in different words (p.102)

The whole section on 'class presumption' (p. 189) was fascinating. I've seen it in other instances, but this example is one of the clearest. 

"Translation is the opposite of empire" (p. 212)

The spread of a language as a 'pivot' is not due to its native speakers. Ex: China's Confucius Institute translates the Chinese classics into French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi and Malay, but all 'on the basis of the English translation' (p. 223)

"Children and women with babes in arms" Do the children have babes in arms as well? (p. 246)

Shibata Motoyuki (p. 303)

Otto Von Bismarck's "Adjutant" vs. "Adjudant" incident (P. 315)

Translation is a thankless task. When a book is translated well, the author is praised. When translated badly, the translator is blamed. (p. 330)

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