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Is That a Fish in Your Ear?
David Bellos
Translation and the Meaning of Everything
Faber & Faber
October 2011
On Sale: October 11, 2011
384 pages
ISBN: 0865478570
EAN: 9780865478572
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Funny and surprising on every page, Is That a Fish in Your
Ear? offers readers new insight into the mystery of how we
come to know what someone else means—whether we wish to
understand Astérix cartoons or a foreign head of state.
Using translation as his lens, David Bellos shows how much
we can learn about ourselves by exploring the ways we use
translation, from the historical roots of written language
to the stylistic choices of Ingmar Bergman, from the United
Nations General Assembly to the significance of James
Cameron’s Avatar. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across
human experience to describe why translation sits deep
within us all, and why we need it in so many situations,
from the spread of religion to our appreciation of
literature; indeed, Bellos claims that all writers are by
definition translators. Written with joie de vivre, reveling
both in misunderstanding and communication, littered with
wonderful asides, it promises any reader new eyes through
which to understand the world.
In the words of Bellos: “The practice of translation rests
on two presuppositions. The first is that we are all
different: we speak different tongues, and see the world in
ways that are deeply influenced by the particular features
of the tongue that we speak. The second is that we are all
the same—that we can share the same broad and narrow kinds
of feelings, information, understandings, and so forth.
Without both of these suppositions, translation could not
exist. Nor could anything we would like to call social life.
Translation is another name for the human condition.”
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