One of the books I received for holiday good wishes was David Bellos’ “Is That a Fish in Your Ear?“, a book length essay on translation.  Even though I identify myself to some degree as a translator, that book has been buried under others:  a  history of Turkey (where I am going), volumes of Proust and Flaubert (having recently come from Paris,)   Lisa Randall’s acclaimed Knocking on Heaven’s Door — promising to bring me up to date on  phyics and the universe.  Kerstin Hoge’s quick review of Fish in the Times Literary Supplement (Jan 6, 2012) will change that.  It’s now next up.

Hoge begins with the wonderful image of translators  seeming “to be engaged in a pas de deux with the source text.  Like dancers, translators can stay in close embrace or more further away… fit their performance to the context..and often find their professional relationship described in eroticized terms (accusations of betrayal and infidelity are part and parcel of the discourse on translation.)”

She summarizes Bellos’ argument that ” translation is another name for the human condition” ..  embodying the presuppositions that we are all different and yet the same.  Translation between languages draws on the same procedure of  “using one word for another” that is employed within a single language.”  That is “, translation is a central feature of linguistic behavior….”

All of which I heartily agree.  Howeve, since  TLS has the peculiarly anti-intellectual policy of keeping a clamp on their content, I’ll have to point you to a few others reviews, all equally laudatory. Adam Thirwell in the NYT.  Maureen Freely in the Telegraph, UK.  Frederick Raphael in The Literary Review.

Looks like a book anyone who realizes that the Bible, the Tolstoy, the Flaubert they have been reading is not what the authors, themselves wrote,  and have wondered about that, would enjoy.