The Philosophy of Translation

Polyglot Searls (The Inkblots)—who has translated works by Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, and Jon Fosse—offers an edifying meditation on his profession. He argues that translation is a form of literary interpretation that requires attunement to cultural context. “There are no rules, only decisions,” Searls contends, suggesting that a text “proposes or affords us a large but far from infinite range of appropriate translations” from which translators must select. Explaining how he considers such choices, Searls recounts how his translation of Max Weber’s lectures for lay people from the late 1910s strived to recreate for contemporary English-speaking audiences the experience that the original German audiences would have had, requiring that he focus on the overall “effect” of the text rather than word-for-word fidelity. Titles can be particularly tricky, Searls writes, discussing how instead of providing a literal translation of Saša Stanišić’s novel Herkunft as Origin, he went with Where You Come From to better evoke the original’s connotations of journeying from a distant starting point. It’s a treat to learn how a translator of Searls’s caliber approaches his work, and his down-to-earth style ensures even the theory-heavy early chapters rarely come across as arcane. This master class will enthrall anyone who’s ever wondered what happens during the translation process. (Oct.)