Translators are the unacknowledged facilitators of the world
DID 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.
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 canali let him have both “channels” and “canals” in his mind at the same time.
The story is told in “Dancing on Ropes”, Anna Aslanyan’s new book about translators’ and interpreters’ roles at critical moments in history. It is full of lively stories like that of Schiaparelli’s canals. Ms Aslanyan is herself both a translator and interpreter (in the argot of the profession, the former works in writing, the latter in speech), and enlists both practical experience and archival history. She leaves the reader with an awed respect for the translator’s task.
Ideally, interpreters are...