Sir: Boyd Tonkin’s review of Anna Aslanyan’s
Dancing on Ropes highlights the post-war abandonment of local Afghan and Iraqi interpreters by the US and UK (Books, 17 July). The UK’s response, up until last summer, deserved every bit of Tonkin’s strictures but the past year has seen a ‘strategic shift’. Ben Wallace and Priti Patel were clearly determined to change our approach and to give sanctuary to our former staff. More generous regulations were introduced in December and April but the imminent withdrawal of Nato forces now raises the fearful prospect of a Taleban takeover, or Taleban-induced paralysis of the Afghan government, before the necessary evacuation can take place.
The power of the translator to break nations
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D
ID A MISTAKEN translation put rovers on Mars? In 1877 Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, used his then state-of-the-art telescope to view and describe what he called “
canali” on the planet. English translators leapt on the discovery of what they rendered as “canals”. There followed a frenzy of speculation that Mars might be inhabited, which left a deep mark on the human imagination. To this day “Martian” is a synonym for alien life.
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But the Italian word could also have been translated as “channels”. Which did Schiaparelli mean? In some writings he was careful to discourage firm conclusions about life on Mars; in others, he encouraged exactly those conclusions. It is almost as though
The irreplaceable art of translation
As long as people joke, swear and use irony, computers will never take the place of translators
Captain Leigh and His Dragoman by David Wilkie. Credit: Alamy
Some people are easier to interpret than others. Churchill’s meandering sentences would often trip up his translators, and USSR leader Khrushchev’s idioms baffled American listeners during Cold War negotiations. While a defendant at Nuremberg, Göring would try to catch prosecutors out by insisting translators repeat themselves and feigning incomprehension.
Dancing on Ropes tells the stories of translators through history. Anna Aslanyan compellingly recounts the verbal exploits of the Ottoman dragomans and the miscommunications during Brexit negotiations, weaving in anecdotes from her experience as a Russian-English interpreter and translator.
Winner announced on 1 June 2021 Three novels have been announced as the finalists of the fourth EBRD Literature Prize, a €20,000 award launched in 2017 by the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in collaboration with the British Council. The EBRD Literature Prize celebrates the very best in translated literature from the almost 40 countries where the Bank invests, from Central and eastern Europe to Central Asia, the Western Balkans and the southern and eastern Mediterranean. The €20,000 Prize is awarded to the best work of literary fiction originally written in a language from one of these countries, which has been translated into English and published by a UK or a Europe-based publisher.
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