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jenniferkowash's review against another edition
3.0
This book is a great philosophical take on many theories and aspects of translation and just language in general. It covers ideas ranging from what translation is and if it's always possible to why human languages are so different from each other. Each idea is thoroughly tossed around in such a way that the reader is able to form their own opinions about it easily. However, this styling also can make the book dizzying as it can feel like it takes quite a bit of mental gymnastics to understand a part if the reader is not primed on the topic at hand. The ample use of French, German, Latin and Greek also can make the reader feel as though they are missing out if not well versed in these languages, but that may be altogether unimportant to some. As long as the reader is prepared to spend longer than normal studying this book and has a strong interest in translation or language it should be a worthwhile read!
rc90041's review against another edition
5.0
A brilliant meditation on the task of translation, full of insight. A sheer pleasure.
cetian's review against another edition
5.0
The take of George Steiner on translation changed my view of the world. It gave me a tool to understand culture, not just language, literature and translations. Steiner says that a translation of a book into a foreign language discovers the new meanings that were always there. This is how I view culture. When someone interprets and translates my culture into theirs, I have a chance to know more about myself and where I came from: benefiting from someone else's perspective.
gerolencia's review against another edition
5.0
“Any model of communication is at the same time a model of translation, of a vertical or horizontal transfer of significance. No two historical epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same things, to send identical signals of valuation and inference. Neither do two human beings.”
mikeblyth's review
2.0
I mistakenly got this book thinking it would be an interesting book for the general public about language and the issues of meaning and translation. Instead, it's a scholarly book probably suitable for those with graduate studies or equivalent in literature. It assumes a wide knowledge of literature which few people outside academia will have. My rating of two stars doesn't mean that this is a bad book, simply that it wasn't one I could enjoy; I gave up partway through.
A couple of quotes give some idea of the style.
A couple of quotes give some idea of the style.
"Feminine uses of the subjunctive in European languages give to material facts and relations a characteristic vibrato. I do not say they lie about the obtuse, resistant fabric of the world: they multiply the facets of reality, they strengthen the adjective to allow it an alternative nominal status, in a way which men often find unnerving."
"White and black trade words as do front-line soldiers lobbing back an undetonated grenade. Watch the motions of feigned responsiveness, menace, and non-information in a landlord’s dialogue with his tenant or in the morning banter of tally-clerk and lorry-driver. Observe the murderous undertones of apparently urbane, shared speech between mistress and maids in Genet’s Les Bonnes. So little is being said, so much is ‘being meant,’ thus posing almost intractable problems for the translator."
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