I just finished reading Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos. I was really excited to read a book about translation. Having studied (to varying levels of competency) three different languages, translation interests me. I like having better words and phrases to express myself, which I do use from time to time. (My favorite is "hygge", a Danish word that loosely translates into "cozy", but it's really a noun and a verb, not an adjective.1)
I'd always thought of translation as being difficult (I was never anywhere near fluent in the three languages I studied), but hadn't thought it through beyond "Poetry must be really hard, because it has to rhyme and have the same rhythm." Is That a Fish in Your Ear? discussed the difficulties in translating for subtitles (limited by the number of characters we can read per minute, plus the speaker must be on screen while the subtitles are up), instruction manuals (depending on what they're for, a mistranslation could kill someone), and comics (the words need to fit in the speech bubbles), just to name a few.
The book did have some interesting historical points. The Nuremberg trials had a necessity for simultaneous translating between four different languages. We still use a similar system in the UN. The skill of these translators astound me. They have to listen to a speaker while saying what that speaker is saying in another language. That just seems impossible.
Bellos spends quite a bit of time explaining different ways to translate, and demonstrating how different translators can come up with different words that express the same thing. It really drives home the point that what is important is the meaning, and not the words.
If you have an interest in how communication works (not just language), I do recommend this book. If nothing else, you'll leave with a greater appreciation for anything you read that is translated.
1 Check out this website for more information on hygge
No comments:
Post a Comment