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Is That a Fish in Your Ear?

Page 36

by David Bellos


  Shakespeare, William; King Lear; Macbeth

  Shalamov, Varlam

  Shannon, Claude

  Shaw, G. B., Pygmalion

  Shibata, Motoyuki

  Shoah (film)

  shunkouliu

  sign, linguistic

  signaling

  signifier

  simultaneous interpreting; EU; Nuremberg Trials; UN

  Singin’ in the Rain (film)

  Sinha, Amara

  slaves; as translators

  Slovak

  Slovene

  Smetona, Antanas

  social class

  Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

  Sonnenfeldt, Richard

  Sophocles

  sound translation

  source-text language; hierarchical relationship between target language and; L1 translation

  South Africa

  South America

  Spain; conquest of Americas

  Spanglish

  Spanglish (film)

  Spanish; Bible; Castilian; as UN language

  speech; differential function of; hand movement and; original common form of; thought transmission and; see also oral translation

  Spitzer, Leo

  Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorti

  spoken speech language

  Stalin, Joseph

  statelessness

  Steiner, George

  Strachey, James

  Strasbourg Oath

  Strategy for American Innovation, A

  Streep, Meryl

  style; individual sense of; poetry; research; sheets; terminology; translation of

  substitute; analogy-based; cultural; of translation for original text

  subtitles

  Sumatra

  Sumerian; dictionaries

  Surrealism

  Swahili

  Swedish

  Switzerland

  Symbolism

  symptomatic meaning

  syntax

  Syria

  Syriac

  Szabó, István

  Tagalog

  Tamil

  target language; hierarchical relationship between source language and; L2 translation; modification

  targums

  Tartu

  Tati, Jacques

  teaching languages; immersion; translation-based

  technology; machine translation; simultaneous interpreting

  teenagers, loss of language proficiency in

  telementation

  television; dubbing; lectoring; newscasters

  tercüman

  thesauruses

  third code

  Thirlwell, Adam

  thought transmission

  Tieck, Ludwig

  titles

  Tok Pisin

  Tolstoy, Leo; War and Peace

  Torah

  Torbert, Preston

  tourism

  Tranglish

  transcoding

  translation: Avatar as parable of; avoidability of; Bible; borderline between rewriting and; boundaries and; commentary; cultural domination and; definitions; as dialect; dictionaries and; disparagement of; diversity of language and; DOWN; effects on receiving cultures; equivalent effect; etymological roots of; EU language-parity rule and; foreign-soundingness of; global; Google; hierarchical relationship between source and target languages; humor; impacts; impossibility of; ineffability and; literal; literary; L3; machine; making forms fit; meaning and; native language and; news; nonfiction; oral; passed off as original work; pseudo-; relations; sameness, likeness, and match; simultaneous interpreting; sound; spread of international law and; of style; as substitute for original text; terminology; UP; variability of; word-for-word ; words and

  transliteration

  treachery

  Treaty of Rome

  Trique

  trust; oral translation and

  Tschinag, Galsan

  Turkish

  Twain, Mark, “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” 107–108

  typo

  typography

  Ugaritic

  Umbrian

  UNESCO

  unification, language

  United Bible Societies

  United Nations; Commission for Human Rights; General Assembly; simultaneous interpreting; translation; World Charter of Human Rights

  United States

  Universal Declaration of Human Rights

  universities, languages taught in

  unstable anchoring

  Urdu

  utterance; meaning and; oral translation

  Uzbek

  Vargas, Fred

  vehicular languages

  Venice

  Venuti, Lawrence

  “Verbatim,” 121–22

  verbs; performative; prepositional

  vernacular languages; African American; translating DOWN to

  vocabulary

  Volapük

  Volodine, Antoine

  Volokhonsky, Larissa

  Voltaire

  von Humboldt, Wilhelm

  von Schlegel, August Wilhelm

  vulgar language

  Waard, Jan de

  Waley, Arthur

  Wall Street Journal

  Walpole, Horace; The Castle of Otranto

  Warner, Rex

  Weaver, Warren

  WELR

  whale language

  whisper translation

  Whorf, Benjamin Lee

  Williams. K.

  Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus

  Wodehouse, P. G.

  Wolof

  word-for-word translation

  wording

  Word Magic

  words; dictionaries; diversity of; identification of; lack of matching; literal vs. figurative meanings; literal translation; meaning and; as names of things; terminology

  Wordsworth, William

  World Bank

  World Trade Organization

  World War I,

  World War II

  written language; difference between oral language and; origins of script

  Wu Jing Project

  Yade, Rama

  Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

  Yiddish

  Yoruba

  Young, Thomas

  Yugoslavia

  Zacuto, Abraham

  Zamenhof, Lejzer

  Zipf’s law

  Zulu

  Permissions

  See Here “Ma mignonne”: English translation of Marot, reproduced with the kind permission of Professor Douglas Hofstadter.

  See Here “Recent observations”: Scientific pastiche, from Cantatrix Sopranica et autres écrits scientifiques, 1991, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as Cantatrix Sopranica: Scientific Papers of Georges Perec (London: Atlas Press, 2008).

  See Here “One consequence of this”: Anadalam 1, from La Vie mode d’emploi (ed. Magné), 1978, Hachette-Littératures, p. 141, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as Life A User’s Manual, 2008, Vintage, p. 110, © David Bellos, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as Life A User’s Manual, new edn., 2009, David R. Godine, p. 125, © David Bellos.

  See Here “Of all the characteristics”: Anadalam 2, from La Vie mode d’emploi (ed. Magné), 1978, Hachette-Littératures, p. 142, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as Life A User’s Manual, 2008, Vintage, p. 110, © David Bellos, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as Life A User’s Manual, new ed., 2009, David R. Godine, p. 125, © David Bellos.

  See Here “If the translation”: Japanese translation terms, from Michael Emmerich, “Beyond Between: Translation, Ghosts, Metaphors,” posted online at wordswithoutborders.org, April 2009, reproduced with the kind permission of Professor Michael Emmerich.

  See Here “Fisches Nachtgesang”: Finnish translation of the sight-poem courtesy of the translator Reijo Ollinen, originally quoted in Andrew Chesterman, Memes of Tr
anslation, John Benjamins, 1997, p. 61.

  See Here “Un petit d’un petit”: French version of Humpty Dumpty, from Luis d’Antin van Rooten, Mots d’Heures, Gousses, Rames, Grossman, 1967.

  See Here “Sa bella giu satore”: Gibberish song from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, 1936, courtesy of the Chaplin estate, copyright © Roy Export S.A.S. All rights reserved.

  See Here “The positive and the classical”: From De La Grammatologie, Jacques Derrida, © Éditions de Minuit; published in English as Of Grammatology , Jacques Derrida. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. © 1998 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.

  See Here “My mother language”: Letter from Estonian translator, reproduced with the kind permission of Anti Saar.

  See Here “In order to give”: Leonard Bloomfield, from Leonard Bloomfield, Language, Henry Holt & Co., 1933, p. 140.

  See Here “Cinoc …”: Perec’s word-killer, from La Vie mode d’emploi (ed. Magné), 1978, Hachette-Littératures, p. 341, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as Life A User’s Manual, 2008, Vintage, pp. 287–88, © David Bellos, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as Life A User’s Manual, new ed., 2009, David R. Godine, p. 327, © David Bellos.

  See Here “Platon could never recall”: From War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Rosemary Edmonds, © Penguin Classics.

  See Here “”: Shunkouliu, reproduced with the kind permission of Professor Perry Link, University of California at Riverside.

  See Here “I’m Asterix!”: Astérix 1, © 2011 Les éditions Albert René/Goscinny-Uderzo.

  See Here “Je suis Astérix!”: Astértix 2, © 2011 Les éditions Albert René/Goscinny-Uderzo.

  See Here “Attempts to render a poem”: Nabokov on translation, from Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin, translated and with a commentary by Vladimir Nabokov, Routledge, 1964, Vol. 1, pp. vii–ix, © Princeton University Press.

  See Here “Faster! Faster!”: Israeli “Onegin stanza,” from Another Place, a Foreign City, by Maya Arad, copyright © by Xargol Books Ltd., Tel-Aviv, 2003; translated into English by Adriana Jacobs and reproduced with her kind permission.

  See Here “‘Sybil,’ said I”: Sybil, from La Disparition, Georges Perec, 1969, Éditions Denoël, in the translation, A Void, by Georges Perec, translated by Gilbert Adair, published by Harvill Press, pp. 107–108. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.

  See Here “We would stare”: Pete the Strangler, from White Dog, Romain Gary, 1970. Reprinted courtesy of the author’s estate and The University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 51.

  See Here “The perfect language”: From From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, Oxford University Press, 2004, © of and reprinted with permission from The British Academy.

  See Here “However great”: Japanese newspaper editorial, translation reproduced with the kind permission of Professor Michael Emmerich.

  See Here “Think of individuals”: Warren Weaver, from Warren Weaver, “Translation,” in Machine Translation of Languages, by William N. Locke and A. D. Booth (eds.), published by The MIT Press. 2

  See Here “I have repeatedly tried”: FAHQT, from “A Demonstration of the Nonfeasibility of Fully Automatic High Quality Translation,” Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, 1960, in Language and Information—Selected Essays on their Theory and Application, Addison-Wesley Publ./Jerusalem Academic, 1964, p. 174.

  See Here “Adolf Hitler”: Joke visiting card 1, from La Vie mode d’emploi (ed. Magné), 1978, Hachette-Littératures, p. 341, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as Life A User’s Manual, 2008, Vintage, pp. 287–88, © David Bellos, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as Life A User’s Manual, new ed., 2009, David R. Godine, p. 327, © David Bellos.

  See Here “Adolf Hitler”: Joke visiting card 2, from La Vie mode d’emploi (ed. Magné), 1978, Hachette-Littératures, p. 341, © Georges Perec; published in Permissions and Acknowledgements in the U.K. as Life A User’s Manual, 2008, Vintage, pp. 287–88, © David Bellos, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as Life A User’s Manual, new ed., 2009, David R. Godine, p. 327, © David Bellos.

  See Here “The old pond”: Haikus, from One Hundred Frogs: From Matsuo Bash to Allen Ginsberg, by Hiroaki Sato, 1995, Weatherhill, Shamb-hala Publications Inc., Boston, MA, © Allen Ginsburg, © James Kirkup, and © Curtis Hidden Page.

  See Here “There is a river”: Wordsworth pastiche, by Catherine M. Fanshawe, extracted from The Faber Book of Parodies, Simon Brett (ed.), 1984, Faber & Faber.

  See Here “Sunday is the dullest day”: T. S. Eliot pastiche, from The Sweeniad, by Myra Buttle (aka Victor Purcell), Secker & Warburg, 1958. Extracted from The Faber Book of Parodies, Simon Brett (ed.), 1984, Faber & Faber.

  See Here “Boy, when I saw old Eve”: J. D. Salinger pastiche, from Adam & Eve & Stuff Like That, by Ed Berman. Extracted from The Faber Book of Parodies, Simon Brett (ed.), 1984, Faber & Faber.

  See Here “LAMENTATIONS”: 53 Days, from 53 Jours, Hachette-Littératures, 1989, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as 53 Days, by Georges Perec, translated by David Bellos, published by Harvill Press, 1994, p. 61, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as 53 Days, David R. Godine, p. 61, © David Bellos.

  A Note About the Author

  David Bellos is the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University, where he is also a professor of French and comparative literature. He has won many awards for his translations, including the Man Booker International translator’s award. He received the Prix Goncourt for his biography of Georges Perec and has also written biographies of Jacques Tati and Romain Gary.

  Copyright © 2011 by David Bellos

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in 2011 by Particular Books, an imprint of

  Penguin Books, Great Britain

  Published in the United States by Faber and Faber, Inc.

  Faber and Faber, Inc.

  An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  www.fsgbooks.com

  Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott

  eISBN 9780865478725

  First eBook Edition : September 2011

  First American edition, 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bellos, David.

  Is that a fish in your ear? : translation and the meaning of everything / David Bellos.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-86547-857-2 (alk. paper)

  I. Title.

  P306.B394 2011

  418’.02—dc23

  2011022237

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  ONE - What Is a Translation?

  TWO - Is Translation Avoidable?

  THREE - Why Do We Call It “Translation”?

  FOUR - Things People Say About Translation

  FIVE - Fictions of the Foreign: The Paradox of “Foreign-Soundingness”

  SIX - Native Command: Is Your Language Really Yours?

  SEVEN - Meaning Is No Simple Thing

  EIGHT - Words Are Even Worse

  NINE - Understanding Dictionaries

  TEN - The Myth of Literal Translation

  ELEVEN - The Issue of Trust: The Long Shadow of Oral Translation

  TWELVE - Custom Cuts: Making Forms Fit

  THIRTEEN - What Can’t Be Said Can’t Be Translated: The Axiom of Effability

  FOURTEEN - How Many Words Do We Have for Coffee?

  FIFTEEN - Bibles and Bananas: The Vertical Axis of Translation Relations

  SIXTEEN - Translation Impacts

  SEVENTEEN - The Third Code: Translation as a Dialect

&nbs
p; EIGHTEEN - No Language Is an Island: The Awkward Issue of L3

  NINETEEN - Global Flows: Center and Periphery in the Translation of Books

  TWENTY - A Question of Human Rights: Translation and the Spread of International Law

  TWENTY-ONE - Ceci n’est pas une traduction : Language Parity in the European Union

  TWENTY-TWO - Translating News

  TWENTY-THREE - The Adventure of Automated Language-Translation Machines

  TWENTY-FOUR - A Fish in Your Ear: The Short History of Simultaneous Interpreting

  TWENTY-FIVE - Match Me If You Can: Translating Humor

  TWENTY-SIX - Style and Translation

  TWENTY-SEVEN - Translating Literary Texts

  TWENTY-EIGHT - What Translators Do

  TWENTY-NINE - Beating the Bounds: What Translation Is Not

  THIRTY - Under Fire: Sniping at Translation

  THIRTY-ONE - Sameness, Likeness, and Match: Truths About Translation

  THIRTY-TWO - Avatar : A Parable of Translation

  Afterbabble: In Lieu of an Epilogue

  ALSO BY DAVID BELLOS

  Notes

  Caveats and Thanks

  Index

  Permissions

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright Page

 

 

 


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