Ambassadors of the Word

by David Lehman with Theodore Stanger in Rome and Barbara Rose in London

Translators are the invisible men of literature. Overlooked and underpaid, they "require the self-effacing disposition of saints," in the words of writer and translator Alastair Reid. Without them, most readers would have to do without the Bible and the "Iliad", Dante and Tolstoy, Freud and Kafka. Yet for every hundred readers who were captivated by Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" - to cite just one recent best-selling literary knockout - are there even five who recognize their debt to William Weaver, the book's translator into English? Probably not, and for a very simple reason: the better the translator has done his job, the less aware we are of his work. The ideal translation resembles a window through which we can behold the original text.

Though little known to the public, a handful of translators is recognized by their peers as the elite in the English language. Heading the list are Weaver translating from Italian, Richard Howard from French, Gregory Rabassa from Spanish and Portuguese, and Ralph Manheim from German and French. They are a rare breed. They can't be in it for the glory (there isn't much) or the money (no one's going to get rich at the going rate of $50 per thousand words); it must be love of literature and a sense of loyalty to languages. "A person with very frugal tastes could live on translation." says Rabassa, 64, the foremost translator of Latin American fiction. "Other than that, no."

Penury is only one of the pitfalls. One irony of the translator's lot is that the only reader qualified to judge a translation is the very reader for whom that translation is unnecessary.

A few years ago it became fashionable to talk of a "global village" created by advanced communications, but the Biblical Tower of Babel remains a better metaphor for our linguistic condition. Rabassa offers a charming illustration. "A rooster sounds the same in Mexico and in New York," he says. "But when you read about roosters crowing in a book, in the United States he says 'cock-a-doodle-do' and in Mexico he says 'ki-ki-ri-ki.' So we've even made the roosters crow differently."

Critic George Steiner devoted his book "After Babel" to the
implications of "the magnificently prodigal, redundant multiplicity of mutually incomprehensible human tongues." Steiner reached a grand conclusion: that in order to understand one another, we automatically translate thoughts into words and words into other words, even when we're speaking the same lingo. "Inside or between languages." Steiner asserts, "human communication equals translation."

If that is so, it would be fair to call our premier translators the unacknowledged ambassadors of the word, cultural emissaries who cross linguistic frontiers with ease and almost convince us that the book we're reading was actually written in English.

3. Now read the text more carefully and from the ideas and opinions expressed in the article, decide which of the sentences are likely to be true (T) or false (F).

1. Lehman believes that the entire world is one united family communicating through the latest technology.

2. Rabassa is convinced that ambitious people who want to make money should become translators.

3. Lehman feels that a good translator should make a native English speaker feel that a translated work was written in English to begin with.

4. Reid believes that extroverts and people concerned with their public image would make good translators.

5. Lehman feels that William Weaver has not received the attention he deserves.

6. Steiner thinks we translate within one language in order to understand another speaker.

7. Rabassa thinks animal research shows that even animals have to translate to communicate.

8. Lehman believes that translators make personal sacrifices in order to further the transmission of culture.

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