David Bellos (ed): Is that a fish in your ear: translation and the meaning of everything

As Editor-in-Chief (that’s not my official title, but it’s what my Book Review Editor calls me) of this August journal, I had my eye on Bellos’ book for some time, and thankfully was assigned to review it (and the Book Review Editor kept his job). Although I read the book pretty quickly, it’s taken me a rather longer period of time to write this review, but I’ll attempt to excuse myself from any accusation of tardiness straightaway. Two of my favourite weekend reads are the book reviews in Saturday’s copy of The Guardian and The Observer (on Sunday), though pretty much every weekend I ask myself how these people read all these books so quickly (if they do at all; more on this later). In my defence, those of you who know me will be aware (probably between gritted teeth, if you’re one of my students (past or present), or have ever submitted a paper to this journal under my stewardship) that I’m nothing if not thorough. My notes on Bellos’ book extend to 29 pages, which would be enough for a paper submission in its own right, so in actual fact, I’ve been (thoroughly) reading the book, and taking copious notes, which I’ve now whittled down to a few pages. Given my predilection for thoroughness, you may agree or disagree with what I write here, but what you will be persuaded of is that I have actually read the book, which cannot always be the case ... We live in a different world nowadays, where everything is instant (unlike, thank God, the coffee, cf. Chap. 14 of Bellos’ book), so one benefit of having taken a while to write this review is that I—and you—have the benefit of reading literally (unlike many native speakers of English, I do know what this means, cf. p. 110, Chap. 10) several tens of reviews of Bellos’ book. Indeed, in the meantime, the French version1