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Is That a Fish in Your Ear?

But translation does almost everything else. It is translation, more than speech itself, that provides incontrovertible evidence of the human capacity to think and to communicate thought.

We should do more of it.

ALSO BY DAVID BELLOS

Balzac Criticism in France, 1950–1900: The Making of a Reputation

Georges Perec: A Life in Words

Jacques Tati: His Life and Art

Romain Gary: A Tall Story

EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR

Essays on Seventeenth-Century French Literature, by Leo Spitzer

Caveats and Thanks

As I’ve tried to write about translation between natural languages, I’ve not mentioned the use of the word as a technical term in mathematics, logic, and some branches of computer science. That would be a different book.

I’ve also failed to say anything about the uses and pitfalls of translation in the military, in war zones, and in hospitals. I plead ignorance. There is surely a lot to be learned from the courageous language mediators who work in these fields.

Readers familiar with translation studies may notice other omissions. Some of them are intentional. George Steiner’s After Babel is still in print, and my reasons for not commenting further on Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” can be found in Cambridge Literary Review 3 (June, 2010): 194–206.

Many of the brains I have picked are mentioned in footnotes and references, but other people and institutions have given me hints, memories, insights, and material in less formal ways. I hope I have not missed out any of my treasured and sometimes involuntary helpers, present and alas in some cases past, who receive here the expression of my sincerest thanks: Ruth Adler, Valerie Aguilar, Esther Allen, Srinavas Bangalore, Alex Bellos, Nat Bellos, George Bermann, Susan Bernofsky, Jim Brogden, Olivia Coghlan, Karen Emmerich, Michael Emmerich, Denis Feeney, Michael Gordin, Jane Grayson, Tom Hare, Roy Harris, Susan Harris, James Hodson, Douglas Hofstadter, Susan Ingram, Adriana Jacobs, David Jones, Graham Jones, Patrick Jospin, Joshua Katz, Sarah Kay, Carine Kennedy, Martin Kern, Judy Laffan, Ella Laszlo, Andrew Lendrum, Perry Link, Simone Marchesi, Heather Mawhinney, Ilona Morison, Sergey Oushakine, Claire Paterson, Georges Perec, Katy Pinke, Mr. Pryce, Kurt Riechenberg, Anti Saar, Kim Scheppele, Bambi Schieffelin, “Froggy” Smith, Jonathan Charles Smith, Lawrence Venuti, Lynn Visson, Kerim Yasar, Froma Zeitlin; the Library of the École de Traduction et d’Interprétation (ETI), University of Geneva; the staff and resources of the Firestone Library, Princeton, New Jersey; the speakers and listeners at the Translation Lunches at Princeton since their inception in 2008; and the four cohorts of students from the classes of 2008 through 2013 who by taking the TRA 200 Thinking Translation course obliged me to think, a lot.

<emphasis>Index</emphasis>

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages of your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Abkhaz

abstract thought

Académie Française

Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart

Adair, Gilbert

adjectives

Afghanistan

Africa

African American vernacular

Agence France-Press (AFP)

Aigui, Gennady

AIIC