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Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything
Până la David Bellos
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A New York Times Notable Book for 2011
One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year
People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages—as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the diversity of languages. Without translation there would be no world news, not much of a reading list in any subject at college, no repair manuals for cars or planes; we wouldn't even be able to put together flat-pack furniture.
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are. Among many other things, David Bellos asks: What's the difference between translating unprepared natural speech and translating Madame Bovary? How do you translate a joke? What's the difference between a native tongue and a learned one? Can you translate between any pair of languages, or only between some? What really goes on when world leaders speak at the UN? Can machines ever replace human translators, and if not, why?
But the biggest question Bellos asks is this: How do we ever really know that we've understood what anybody else says—in our own language or in another? Surprising, witty, and written with great joie de vivre, this book is all about how we comprehend other people and shows us how, ultimately, translation is another name for the human condition.
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Începeți să citițiInformații despre carte
Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything
Până la David Bellos
Descriere
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011
One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year
People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages—as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the diversity of languages. Without translation there would be no world news, not much of a reading list in any subject at college, no repair manuals for cars or planes; we wouldn't even be able to put together flat-pack furniture.
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are. Among many other things, David Bellos asks: What's the difference between translating unprepared natural speech and translating Madame Bovary? How do you translate a joke? What's the difference between a native tongue and a learned one? Can you translate between any pair of languages, or only between some? What really goes on when world leaders speak at the UN? Can machines ever replace human translators, and if not, why?
But the biggest question Bellos asks is this: How do we ever really know that we've understood what anybody else says—in our own language or in another? Surprising, witty, and written with great joie de vivre, this book is all about how we comprehend other people and shows us how, ultimately, translation is another name for the human condition.
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Very thorough and detailed (and so I ended up skimming through quite a bit :)
I found the bit about the EU very interesting, God help me; and it was great to see Asterix mentioned. In fact, there's loads to interest you, even if, like me, you're really just an end user of translations. I always look out now to see if what I'm reading has been translated up or down.
If you're like me, that is, someone fascinated with the topic of translation for so many years, as well as this topic's connection to many other fields of human activities, you'll devour this book. After all, is it even possible not to fall in love with a book that starts to tell its story by referring to Hofstadter's "Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language"? Love at first sight, indeed!Prepare your favorite drink, find a silent place, and get ready for an intelligent conversation that always keeps a sense of humor on how we're surrounded by the activity we call translation. As the author tackles famous myths about translation, you'll get to admire this human faculty, and learn more about the obscure corners of this intricate world, a world where silent victories of human intellect are celebrated by thankless readers. The book will take you from building a perspective on the excruciating debate of poetry translation to how translators deal with the maddening constraints of comic books. But it will not stop there, and take you on a journey of international publishing and how politics and dominant forces shape the book market as we know it. As if that's not enough, you'll learn about unique linguistic state of European Union, and how it affects laws and funny things about legislation. You will smile and scratch your head in confusion. Sometimes at the some time.In the end, will this book succeed in translating the beauty of such a uniquely human activity into a neural encoding for you indirectly? Well, it did, for me, to an extent. And I tried to translate some of my experience into signs on a computer screen. Consider this a brief "thank you" note.
In titling his book (or having his book titled?) Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, David Bellos has certainly made categorising this work a difficult task. It looks and feels like it should belong firmly in the 'popular science' section, yet as other reviewers have pointed out, the writing sits it firmly in a half-way academic category. Still, the material covered should be of interest to a wide range of readers, with the book split into fairly short and relatively self-contained chapters, that one can really dip and choose or skip out the parts that are of little interest. The book covers a very wide range of topics, and skitters over numerous areas such as philosophy, biology, religion and of course linguistics.
One of the first things that struck me about the work as a whole was that Bellos was taking the opportunity to defend his profession, or at least his approach to the business of translation. Chapters often deal with a particular assault on translation or translators, mainly in the form of an every day platitude, which is then investigated, tested and (for the most part) satisfactorily overturned. I found myself disagreeing with his opinions on occasions, but the evidence is presented well enough that the reader can draw his own conclusions most of the time. Neverthelees, there appear to be some contradictions in the book, and some of his arguments felt at times overdrawn. For instance, he criticises a statement made by Nabokov regarding Pushkin's poetry that 'to reproduce the rhymes and yet translate the entire poem literally is mathematically impossible'. He then goes on to illustrate how the form of said poetry lent itself well to translation, and that the root of Nabokov's statement lay in his reluctance to attempt it. Whilst this isn't necessarily untrue, it doesn't detract from Nabokov's original statement about the impossibility of translating both form and content, nor does the statement that other gifted translators give a 'good approximation of Pushkin's verse'. Bellos' own chapter on poetry, as another reviewer well pointed out, if anything confirms Nabokov in his statement.
In his defence of translation, Bellos covers a wide range of fields and periods, from Sumeria through the Bible to the EU, with humour, legalese and interpreting all playing a part. He depaints the difficulties the translator faces, having restrictions of space (e.g. comics), time (e.g. film subtitles/dubbing), dealing with grammatical features that are missing in target or source language, or simply requiring clarification of meaning where there is none to be had. The chapters covering the workings of the EU and the UN are particularly interesting, as is the thread running through the work about the dominant role of English and its potential effects on other languages through the work of translators. Another strong point is Bellos' inclusion of plenty of examples and anecdotes that help to elucidate his points, both in terms of the difficulties and the successes.
Whilst there were a few statements in the book which I would consider 'mistakes', these were always peripheral to the main argument, and the work is otherwise extremely well-researched and detailed. Bellos writes with authority, and despite his strong points of view never comes across as condescending - in fact, a real sense of modesty peers through his writing, especially when dealing with areas of translation that are not his particular field.
Ultimately, this is a book that will definitely appeal to the right reader. Despite my finding some of his arguments to be not particularly convincing, Bellos presents enough information and evidence to allow his readers to make their own minds up. As an overall introduction and summary to the world of translations, this book is a thorough success, most suited to students of language, those considering becoming translators, and perhaps people interested in finding out more about the translations they themselves consume. Yet as others have pointed out, it isn't as straightforward a read as the title or dust jacket make out, so a brief flick through before picking it up would probably save a few rumpled foreheads.
One of the first things that struck me about the work as a whole was that Bellos was taking the opportunity to defend his profession, or at least his approach to the business of translation. Chapters often deal with a particular assault on translation or translators, mainly in the form of an every day platitude, which is then investigated, tested and (for the most part) satisfactorily overturned. I found myself disagreeing with his opinions on occasions, but the evidence is presented well enough that the reader can draw his own conclusions most of the time. Neverthelees, there appear to be some contradictions in the book, and some of his arguments felt at times overdrawn. For instance, he criticises a statement made by Nabokov regarding Pushkin's poetry that 'to reproduce the rhymes and yet translate the entire poem literally is mathematically impossible'. He then goes on to illustrate how the form of said poetry lent itself well to translation, and that the root of Nabokov's statement lay in his reluctance to attempt it. Whilst this isn't necessarily untrue, it doesn't detract from Nabokov's original statement about the impossibility of translating both form and content, nor does the statement that other gifted translators give a 'good approximation of Pushkin's verse'. Bellos' own chapter on poetry, as another reviewer well pointed out, if anything confirms Nabokov in his statement.
In his defence of translation, Bellos covers a wide range of fields and periods, from Sumeria through the Bible to the EU, with humour, legalese and interpreting all playing a part. He depaints the difficulties the translator faces, having restrictions of space (e.g. comics), time (e.g. film subtitles/dubbing), dealing with grammatical features that are missing in target or source language, or simply requiring clarification of meaning where there is none to be had. The chapters covering the workings of the EU and the UN are particularly interesting, as is the thread running through the work about the dominant role of English and its potential effects on other languages through the work of translators. Another strong point is Bellos' inclusion of plenty of examples and anecdotes that help to elucidate his points, both in terms of the difficulties and the successes.
Whilst there were a few statements in the book which I would consider 'mistakes', these were always peripheral to the main argument, and the work is otherwise extremely well-researched and detailed. Bellos writes with authority, and despite his strong points of view never comes across as condescending - in fact, a real sense of modesty peers through his writing, especially when dealing with areas of translation that are not his particular field.
Ultimately, this is a book that will definitely appeal to the right reader. Despite my finding some of his arguments to be not particularly convincing, Bellos presents enough information and evidence to allow his readers to make their own minds up. As an overall introduction and summary to the world of translations, this book is a thorough success, most suited to students of language, those considering becoming translators, and perhaps people interested in finding out more about the translations they themselves consume. Yet as others have pointed out, it isn't as straightforward a read as the title or dust jacket make out, so a brief flick through before picking it up would probably save a few rumpled foreheads.
Fascinating.
Good book for the generalist. The sections on the European Council and UN multiple translations and simultaneous interpretations was very good. One thing that we in teaching English to speakers of other languages have to engage with is the ubiquity of English and the ramifications of that: One point made here is that often an English translation is a pivot translation: it's a translation made from one language to be used to translate into another language. Its sections on multilingualism and language preservation are also topics that intersect with issues in applied linguistics.
People who love literature in translation owes it to themselves to read this book, which gives an honest appraisal of the craft of bringing a text from one language to another. It's an apology for translation that refutes the received knowledge that a translation is a poor substitute for the original. It also delves into the details of translation and is especially interesting regarding relationships between languages and how the relative dominance of a given language impacts the manner of translation.
“Give a hundred competent translators a page to translate, and the chances of any two versions being identical are close to zero. This fact about interlingual communication has persuaded many people that translation is not an interesting topic – because it is always approximate, it is just a second-rate kind of thing.”
Indeed, I have never thought much about translation. Even while reading all these translated works this past month, I’ve never thought about the actual act of translating, and how incredibly difficult it must be.
And Bellos’ book makes me respect this job, this science, this art of translation.
And David Bellos knows what he is talking about. For he is a professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University, and also the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. In this book, he sets out to investigate:
“What is it that translators really do? How many different kinds of translating are there? What do the uses of this mysterious ability tell us about human societies, past and present? How do the facts of translation relate to language use in general – and to what we think a language is?”
One of the biggest eye openers was the seemingly simple Asterix comics. In the book, Bellos reproduces a single cell from the strip, where Asterix meets ‘Anticlimax’, who is in the original French called ‘Jolitorax’, a pun on “fair chest”, “pretty thorax” which doesn’t mean anything to English-speakers, but would to someone who speaks French. Translator Anthea Bell substitutes ‘Anticlimax’ for ‘Jolithorax’, and Bellos quips: “If you thought translating Proust might be difficult, just try Asterix”. For cartoon translators have to make it fit the picture, and the speech bubble, among other issues.
Of course translation of graphic novels is just a teeny weeny part of this book. Bellos discusses all aspects of translation, from dictionaries to oral translation to translating humour.
Quite a lot of this is out of my league, way over my head, or just too much information. And it all got too much towards the end of the book – I skipped the chapter on Language Parity in the European Union (seems to belong more in a textbook), and skimmed most of some other chapters like the one on automated language-translation machines.
But Bellos did make me think more about translation, translators, and their effect on language and the world.
An interesting example is that of a junior trader in the Dutch East India Company who translated the Gospel of Matthew from Dutch into Malay, using words from Arabic, Portuguese and Sanskrit when he knew no corresponding term. However, when the Dutch version talks of a fig tree, the translator used the Malay word ‘pisang’ or banana tree, which he justified by the fact that there are no fig trees on Sumatra. So it makes one wonder about the translations that we read, how much of it is interpreted in a different way for us, for those who may not understand that culture, that society, that style of humour, for instance. It goes to show much translators put of themselves into what they translate. As with the first quote right at the start of this post, no two translations will be identical. It is quite fascinating!
I could continue with many more examples from the book. I found myself sticking post-its all over this library book (of course I’ll remove them before I return it).
“English, for instance, doesn’t possess a designated term for the half-eaten pita bread placed in perilous balance on the top of a garden fence by an overfed squirrel that I can see right now out of my study window, but this deficiency in my vocabulary doesn’t prevent me from observing, describing, or referring to it.”
Is that a Fish in Your Ear? is incredibly informative, and far more humorous than I expected it to be, and the parts that I didn’t skip over were great reads, peppered with great examples. But while this book started out so strong and made me so interested in the act of translation, it’s a bit disappointing how it ended – a little too tedious for the everyday reader. However, as David Bellos says at the end of the book about translation, “We should do more of it.”
And as readers, we should read more of it.
Indeed, I have never thought much about translation. Even while reading all these translated works this past month, I’ve never thought about the actual act of translating, and how incredibly difficult it must be.
And Bellos’ book makes me respect this job, this science, this art of translation.
And David Bellos knows what he is talking about. For he is a professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University, and also the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. In this book, he sets out to investigate:
“What is it that translators really do? How many different kinds of translating are there? What do the uses of this mysterious ability tell us about human societies, past and present? How do the facts of translation relate to language use in general – and to what we think a language is?”
One of the biggest eye openers was the seemingly simple Asterix comics. In the book, Bellos reproduces a single cell from the strip, where Asterix meets ‘Anticlimax’, who is in the original French called ‘Jolitorax’, a pun on “fair chest”, “pretty thorax” which doesn’t mean anything to English-speakers, but would to someone who speaks French. Translator Anthea Bell substitutes ‘Anticlimax’ for ‘Jolithorax’, and Bellos quips: “If you thought translating Proust might be difficult, just try Asterix”. For cartoon translators have to make it fit the picture, and the speech bubble, among other issues.
Of course translation of graphic novels is just a teeny weeny part of this book. Bellos discusses all aspects of translation, from dictionaries to oral translation to translating humour.
Quite a lot of this is out of my league, way over my head, or just too much information. And it all got too much towards the end of the book – I skipped the chapter on Language Parity in the European Union (seems to belong more in a textbook), and skimmed most of some other chapters like the one on automated language-translation machines.
But Bellos did make me think more about translation, translators, and their effect on language and the world.
An interesting example is that of a junior trader in the Dutch East India Company who translated the Gospel of Matthew from Dutch into Malay, using words from Arabic, Portuguese and Sanskrit when he knew no corresponding term. However, when the Dutch version talks of a fig tree, the translator used the Malay word ‘pisang’ or banana tree, which he justified by the fact that there are no fig trees on Sumatra. So it makes one wonder about the translations that we read, how much of it is interpreted in a different way for us, for those who may not understand that culture, that society, that style of humour, for instance. It goes to show much translators put of themselves into what they translate. As with the first quote right at the start of this post, no two translations will be identical. It is quite fascinating!
I could continue with many more examples from the book. I found myself sticking post-its all over this library book (of course I’ll remove them before I return it).
“English, for instance, doesn’t possess a designated term for the half-eaten pita bread placed in perilous balance on the top of a garden fence by an overfed squirrel that I can see right now out of my study window, but this deficiency in my vocabulary doesn’t prevent me from observing, describing, or referring to it.”
Is that a Fish in Your Ear? is incredibly informative, and far more humorous than I expected it to be, and the parts that I didn’t skip over were great reads, peppered with great examples. But while this book started out so strong and made me so interested in the act of translation, it’s a bit disappointing how it ended – a little too tedious for the everyday reader. However, as David Bellos says at the end of the book about translation, “We should do more of it.”
And as readers, we should read more of it.
A thorough and interesting book on translating.
Well worth a read as an introduction to one of those activities that's a "black box" from which most of us only ever see the output. Brings to your attention the competing tensions of which criteria to translate *by*, and what a thankless task it often is, especially in our Anglophile culture (apparently in Japan top translators are as celebrated and feted as top authors).
The 'Hitch-Hiker's Guide' reference in the title suggests a jocular approach to the science and art of inter-Language translation, and Bellos maintains this light-hearted style as he tunnels deeply and extensively into its subject which proves to be one in which even the question of accuracy, and even of the possibility of translation itself are shown to depend on what we mean by accuracy and translation. Bellos' approach is both rigorous and firmly founded in the history of human communication, in all of its forms and intents, and it is entertaining. More than that, I feel it makes necessary reading for any who value the riches of language, and not just for the pedants who find the ability to share thoughts with precision. I should make it clear that I am no professional in language, merely an intrigued amateur, but for me, Bellos' progress towards his aims and objectives stands proudly alongside the books of the great Steven Pinker. I found but one unturned stone in his analysis, that of the translation of musical lyrics, particularly in the classical sphere, where source and destination texts may involve a biblical commonality that further complicates the prime requirement that the words must mellifluously fit the notes. A specialist probably deserving of a fleeting mention, certainly, and Bellos is easily forgiven its omission. An excellent book.
David Bellos, an award-winning translator and biographer, here gives us a discourse on what a translation is, to you and me, academics and the 'word smiths' themselves.The cover and subtitle evoke Douglas Adams's Babel Fish and 'the meaning of life, the universe and everything'. Describing the book as 'witty, and with surprising joie de vivre' in its blurb, I expected just that: namely, a light-hearted approach to the complexity of translating one language into another. Unfortunately, I was wrong. For large parts of the book I was reminded of an ongoing academical debate between linguists, scholars of translation studies and philosophers, arguing about semantics and the merits of free against literal translation, with terms of academese to match. I found it very hard going at times, the material, such as 'Meaning is no simple thing' and 'What can't be said can't be translated: The Axiom of Effability', as dry as tinder. The subject is more accessible when he touches on the practical issues of translation, like the challenges of translating the Bible into obscure languages or translating comic strips; language equality in the EU and the way the European Court of Justice operates; automated translation devices; and the emergence of simultaneous translation at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal. It is also fascinating to read about the examples from history about the use of translation or its avoidance that he gives, such as the use of slaves as translators during the Ottoman Empire and Albania's self-imposed half-century of isolation during the 20th century. There are times when the author's sparkling sense of humour shines through, but a lot of the time I found his style a bit too clever for its own good, heavy-handed and trying to hammer home the point a little too often that translators are an undervalued and mostly underpaid bunch of word smiths. There is no denying that David Bellos is a very knowledgeable man with a passion for translating, or that this book is very well researched, it's just that I can't really appreciate the finer points of 'necessary concomitants to the successful performance of the action of a performative verb'. But he also has some valid and insightful viewpoints to offer: as someone for whom English is not their first language, I did feel like he was addressing me personally when he states that 'it does not automatically follow that the language of our earliest memories has any special importance as a language for what we may go on to become, or for what we take to be our personal identity.' He goes on to say, 'But the language that is acquired in those early stages of development [i.e. infancy] may or may not turn out to be the one in which as adults we feel most at home.'If you're interested in this topic, I suggest you watch Stephen Fry's excellent BBC series Fry's Planet Word where he deals with the complex idea of language and translation in a fascinating, yet light-hearted way - does anyone know if he's written a book on the subject?(This review was originally written for Amazon's Vine programme.)
After having worked as a translator for almost 20 years, I find it interesting as a summary of the things that go through the mind of a translator, but it doesn't add much. I'm quite sure it would be very interesting for non-translators or presumptive translators wanting to find out what goes into a translation, what a translators considerations are, and what it really means to be a translator.
Very erudite work by the director of the translation program at Princeton, peppered with very witty evidence from many many languages. It would be a fun read for anyone with an interest in language, not just translations. I'm not sure I agree with his final thoughts about language, but as a language professional I enjoyed the many examples and trivia very much. It also has an e-less version of one of my favorite poems that made me literally laugh out loud in delight.
This book ended up on several Best Books of 2011 lists, yet I wonder if every reviewer read past the sexy title and consumed it from end to end. David Bellos is a professional translater (French to English) and has some very interesting and enlightening views on communication and translation. In this book, he doesn't shy away from radical overstatement (such as when he says that nowadays English is the only lingua franca that the various Belgian linguistic communities can still use to communicate with eachother). But he is easily forgiven, because he really provides new insight on what a translation is or should be. Unavoidably, this leads to meta-meta-paragraphs about language than can be quite dense at first glance. Other parts are seriously theoretical (such as the Axiom of Ineffability), which make this book's position on the Best Books list rather surprising, as I doubt that many people are interested in this level of theoretical analysis (I am, so I enjoyed it).
This author presents many fascinating ideas in this small volume dense with insights into language and communication. And best of all, he delivers this information with humor, verve, and style.Bellos tells us that although there are perhaps as many as 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, most are spoken by very small groups. To engage with the outside world, “vehicular languages” are needed; that is, languages learned by nonnative speakers for the purpose of communicating with native speakers of a third tongue. Some eighty languages are considered vehicular, but knowing just nine of them would permit effective conversation with around 90 percent of the world’s population. The language with the largest number of nonnative users is English, but English is not the language with the largest number of native speakers, which currently is Mandarin Chinese.Perhaps I have thus far given the impression that this book is just a compendium of fun language facts. It is, but that’s not the point of the book at all. Rather, the author sets out to define translation, and then determine what makes a good translation, and finally to consider why we need translation at all? Why don’t we all just learn to speak a common language? In characterizing translation, Bellos explains that “meaning” is not the only component of an utterance; there is also tone of voice, context, layout, intention, culture, form (such as poem, play, legal document), the identities of the communicants together with the relationship between them, etc. In fact, as Bellos observes, what matters the most is not a word-to-word congruence. On the contrary, it is more important for the translator to preserve the force of the utterance in another language. Thus the translator must take into account such factors as levels of formality in conversation, as well as customs and rules about how men and women and people of different social classes may relate to each other. Importantly, he adds, “No sentence contains all the information you need to translate it.”One of my favorite examples in the book is this anecdote:"In many parts of Africa… casting branches in the path of a chief expresses contempt, whereas in the Gospels it is done to mark Jesus’s return to Jerusalem as a triumph… Revision of the Gospel’s account of Palm Sunday is both absolutely necessary to avoid giving the wrong message to African readers and at the same time impossible without profoundly altering the story being told.”Another great example given by Bellows concerns a statement released by the office of Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, in 1870. The statement referred to a communication made to the French by “the adjutant of the day.” In German, this is a high-ranking courtier, but in French, this is a mere warrant officer. The French took the meaning of this word-for-word translation as a sign of grievous disrespect, and an international incident ensued, culminating in a declaration of war by the French six days later.Translating humor is a particular challenge; meaning must almost always be changed to get the particular point across the original is trying to make. Moreover, translators try to get across the style of an author or what makes him or her distinct:"The question is: At what level is the Dickensianity of any text by Dickens located? In the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the digressions, the anecdotes, the construction of character, or the plot?"All of these considerations (and many more delineated by Bellos) mean that just knowing the words of another language is insufficient to be a good translator.At the end of the book, Bellos asks if one day we might just be able to have the equivalent of a translation fish in our ears, as was the device used in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, and then we would all be able to understand one another totally. He suggests this is unlikely, since linguistic diversity serves other functions besides the conveyance of meaning in different formats: it also serves to establish lines of in-groups and out-groups, and helps form part of the identity of an individual as a member of a specific community. “Every language,” he notes, “tells your listener who you are, where you come from, where you belong.” It is not poetry that is lost in translation, he avers, it is community. But translation can accomplish almost everything else to enable human beings to communicate thought. He concludes “We should do more of it.”Evaluation: This is a highly entertaining and thought-provoking treatise on what comprises communication and the surprisingly small but important role that language plays in the process. I loved this book.Note: Bellos is the prize-winning translator of the works of Georges Perec and Ismail Kadare. He teaches French and Comparative literature at Princeton University
Thrillingly interesting, shows language as putty, the relativeness of cultures, the flow of a language, not bound, also the interpenetration of languages and speech in general, and much more. To be read fairly slowly, savoured, thought about. But it's not overly academic.