Is That A Fish In Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure Of Translation (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
This book was about the art/science or translation and some of the theories on the subject. If there was a main thesis, it was that translation is a very subjective exercise. There were also interesting chapters on the history of translation and polyglotism (word of the day!). Christopher Columbus corresponded and kept journals in like six different languages! The author also made a couple of interesting points about the hierarchy of translation; if you translate from a less commonly used language (Swedish) to a more commonly used language (English), you're translating "up." I was hoping to learn a bit more about the art of language learning, so I was a bit disappointed, although that's my fault for not researching the book very well before buying. In any case, this book had some interesting chapters, but there was a lot of redundancy and I only made it halfway through. Highly entertaining read through various facets of translation and translation philosophy. The book has the right balance between anecdote and analysis to keep the lay reader engaged. One of the highlights in the book comes right at the end in the epilogue with a reassessment of the reason behind language.Bellos has translated Perec, including Life A Users Manual which I started reading 20 years ago, but never got through the first quarter. He uses Perec a lot in his examples and I'm sorely tempted to return to Life A Users Manual in 2014....He also references Hofstadter's Ton Beau de Marot a lot, which I also really enjoyed.
What do You think about Is That A Fish In Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure Of Translation (2012)?
Fascinating!Not just for translators or linguists. Highly recommended.
—misha
A bit disappointing; not terribly original, I thought.
—lizabeth209
Boring, and full of stereotypes, lack of thoughts
—zanecasbz
