Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything

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.

As someone who comes from a family of translators and who has worked in translation himself, I am utterly glad that someone has come up with a book like this, an honest and passionate attempt to unveil the world of translation to the average person and spark the debate among the more knowledgeable ones.In attempting to write a book that covers, well, pretty much everything about translation, David Bellos has produced a comprehensive and badly needed primer full of insight, yet a not-so coherent and cohesive unity. The book is divided into 32 small sections (yes, 32), each dealing with a different aspect of translation, from the meaning of "meaning", to the alleged "myth" of literal translation, with newswires and the ridiculous sophistication of coffee-shop language somewhere in-between. Some of these sections are delightful and concisely written, others are riddled with analogies and humorous attempts that distract from the main topic, yet others are frankly repetitive or well under-developed. The result is less a piece that seems to flow from chapter to chapter, but rather something that feels at times like a collection of disparate short essays that rumble from bananas to bibles to eskimos and back to translation. While some chapters indeed perform liaisons to previous or following ones, sadly that is not the overall feeling that one gets when tackling the text.I guess this is the unavoidable result of attempting to put together so many different topics under a single umbrella, while trying to give equal importance to each and every single one. But my other assumption is that the book could have greatly benefited from a better editing job, which in turn would have resulted in a more 'natural' feeling to the final product.On the other hand, I do not necessarily agree with everything that Mr. Bellos asserts and the way he does it (but that is a whole different story). I believe he gives too much credence to his own opinions and parades them as axioms, without even considering or giving some space to alternative or critical views. The issue of 'literal translation' is a good -but no the only one- example of this. According to the author's Manichean vision, a literal translation is 'not really' a translation and is such a daunting and fictitious task that is almost not worth trying. This whole argument is sustained in a verbal and semantic pirouette, given that he later on acknowledges that it really all depends on what 'literal' and, yes, 'translation' means to you. However, he does not even bother in considering the opinion of someone who believes that a literal translation (or something close to it) is possible. It simply can not happen, period. One wonders whether he is representing the entire translation community or just speaking for himself which, based on reading his text, is quite hard to tell.Now, on the positive side, the book is full of pearls of wisdom and clever insights into the world of translating. I really hope that this work contributes to spreading the word on the invaluable contribution of translators all over the world, and I hope as well that next time Mr. Bellos will find a better editor.

Am I missing something? Or am I the boy in the Emperor's New Clothes?I make my living as a translator and I used to teach English at university level. So this book ought to have appealed to me, especially if the fulsome reviews are to be believed. But I found it just dull. Bellos writes like an academic and that is not a compliment. There are places - many places - where my brain just clouded over, either from information overload (as in the details of systems at the ECJ and UN), or from what I found the plodding nature of the prose.There are many things known to all translators but not to the general public that pass unmentioned. For instance, Bellos notes that most translation is done into the translator's "mother tongue". But he doesn't say why - and any commercial translator will tell you that the problem is rarely understanding the original (what else are dictionaries and contacts for?) but working out how to express it naturally in the target language (for which Google comes in useful). And he never mentions that the most important factor in whether a text is hard or easy to translate is not the content but the quality of writing in the original (grammaticality, sentence structure, word usage, etc.). Difficult stuff written well just requires work. Easy stuff written badly is always a headache, because written badly almost invariably means ambiguity. Bellos is presumably luckier than the rest of us in getting good texts to translate.He also gets literary texts, and talks a lot about them. This may be interesting for the general reader but it has very little to do with how most of us make our living.There's also some very curious stuff presented, almost, as established fact. For instance, while Bellos is right to point to the way that language is a very significant factor in establishing social identity, it is surely going way beyond justification claiming, as he does, that this is the main function of language and the main driver of its origins.There's no reason to doubt the sincerity of the ranks of critics and reviewers. If they enjoyed this book, then that's great. But plainly I didn't. And that comes from someone from within the trade. There's no reason why someone shouldn't be able to produce a good book about translation for the general reader, but this one didn't do it for me.

Those of us with a suspicious, cynical or just plain realistic view of the world will undoubtedly have pondered the veracity of the translated texts they read and the translated speech they hear or read. In many foreign films they will often be reflecting on the amount of time it takes the speaker to say apparently not very much. If they have even a basic grasp of the language being spoken they will know there are some words that are not mentioned in subtitles, and will be puzzled by the content of the translation itself, to the point of vehement disagreement.Sometimes the source text, for example the original Hebrew bible, is in a form wide open to interpretation, with no lower case letters, word spacing or punctuation: whole wars have been fought over the positioning of a comma in the Old Testament. Sometimes the original meaning of a word, despite the supposed handing down of meaning orally by clerics, is completely lost: David Bellos here tells us that nobody actually knows the meaning of "cherubim", for example, and it has therefore had to be inferred.These and many other themes related to translation are addressed by Bellos in this informative and entertaining volume. He examines the history of translation, in the process tracing the word back to its roots over 5000 years ago, and its politics, including the issues surrounding translation at international bodies such as the UN and EU, and the way a whole, powerful caste of translators emerged in Ottoman Venice. He looks at the way in which machines have been harnessed in various ways to act as translators, including Google's algorithm to use existing online translations, often using English as a pivot language, to enable new ones. He analyses the thorny issues of translated humour and, a particular bugbear of this reviewer, poetry or song, where often whole stanzas are rethought in order to preserve rhyme, but at the loss of meaning. He confirms the suspicion that advanced learners of a non-native language eventually cease to translate as they read, having reached an understanding that transcends translation. And he shows, using measures of their volumes, where the main efforts are in translation, giving a feel for where economic, political and cultural power lie internationally.To his credit, Bellos does not compromise the seriousness of the subject. There is no attempt at gratuitous lightheartedness, although there is plenty of humour, or at dumbing down. As well as the mechanics of translation he addresses the more philosophical aspects, particularly the ethics of translation. That may have cost him some readers, but the book is stronger and more valuable for it.

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.

The Title is borrow from a passage in “The Hitchhikers’ Guide of the Galaxy", a marvellous ironic Science-Fiction novel of Douglas Adams but beware because this book is not a novel but an Essay on Translation written with a humorous witty pen. David Bellos used a very precise vocabulary not only in English, but in many European languages in exploring many myths about the impossibilities of translating with funny comparisons taken either from the Bible or Asterix with Panache. Believe me, it is far to be a boring academic serious essay, it is definitely very readable, though-provoking revelation on the Author own understanding that “translation is another name for the human condition”. It is a book that you will often return and enjoy.

I have just re-read this wonderful book (in the hardback edition) having first read it not long after it came out.It is a beautifully written and thoughtful book for an interested lay person who has an interest in language. It deals with a very wide range of issues that arise when considering translation - from the practical to the philosophical - and does so in a way that gets you thinking beyond the many entertaining and interesting examples given. There is so much more to translation once you start to think about it.And inspirational? Well it has to be an exceptional book that makes you revisit your schoolboy French.....Oh and the jokes are good (but a devil to translate)