What's lost in a bad translation – and what it takes to craft a great one

The Sunday Magazine

Whether your holiday book wish list includes classics like The Nutcracker or works by contemporary authors like Jon Fosse and Elena Ferrante... if you want to read them in English, then you’ll have to thank a translator. But Damion Searls says that the work of translating is more complicated than simply converting words from one language to another. In the latest instalment of Word Processing – our ongoing look at language – David Common speaks with the noted author and translator about his book The Philosophy of Translation, the nuance needed to make a faithful translation and what gets lost when authors outsource that work to technology.