Is That a Fish in Your Ear?

See Here “I’m Asterix!”: Astérix 1, © 2011 Les éditions Albert René/Goscinny-Uderzo.

See Here “Je suis Astérix!”: Astértix 2, © 2011 Les éditions Albert René/Goscinny-Uderzo.

See Here “Attempts to render a poem”: Nabokov on translation, from Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin, translated and with a commentary by Vladimir Nabokov, Routledge, 1964, Vol. 1, pp. vii–ix, © Princeton University Press.

See Here “Faster! Faster!”: Israeli “Onegin stanza,” from Another Place, a Foreign City, by Maya Arad, copyright © by Xargol Books Ltd., Tel-Aviv, 2003; translated into English by Adriana Jacobs and reproduced with her kind permission.

See Here “‘Sybil,’ said I”: Sybil, from La Disparition, Georges Perec, 1969, Éditions Denoël, in the translation, A Void, by Georges Perec, translated by Gilbert Adair, published by Harvill Press, pp. 107–108. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.

See Here “We would stare”: Pete the Strangler, from White Dog, Romain Gary, 1970. Reprinted courtesy of the author’s estate and The University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 51.

See Here “The perfect language”: From From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, Oxford University Press, 2004, © of and reprinted with permission from The British Academy.

See Here “However great”: Japanese newspaper editorial, translation reproduced with the kind permission of Professor Michael Emmerich.

See Here “Think of individuals”: Warren Weaver, from Warren Weaver, “Translation,” in Machine Translation of Languages, by William N. Locke and A. D. Booth (eds.), published by The MIT Press. 2

See Here “I have repeatedly tried”: FAHQT, from “A Demonstration of the Nonfeasibility of Fully Automatic High Quality Translation,” Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, 1960, in Language and Information—Selected Essays on their Theory and Application, Addison-Wesley Publ./Jerusalem Academic, 1964, p. 174.

See Here “Adolf Hitler”: Joke visiting card 1, from La Vie mode d’emploi (ed. Magné), 1978, Hachette-Littératures, p. 341, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as Life A User’s Manual, 2008, Vintage, pp. 287–88, © David Bellos, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as Life A User’s Manual, new ed., 2009, David R. Godine, p. 327, © David Bellos.

See Here “Adolf Hitler”: Joke visiting card 2, from La Vie mode d’emploi (ed. Magné), 1978, Hachette-Littératures, p. 341, © Georges Perec; published in Permissions and Acknowledgements in the U.K. as Life A User’s Manual, 2008, Vintage, pp. 287–88, © David Bellos, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as Life A User’s Manual, new ed., 2009, David R. Godine, p. 327, © David Bellos.

See Here “The old pond”: Haikus, from One Hundred Frogs: From Matsuo Bashō to Allen Ginsberg, by Hiroaki Sato, 1995, Weatherhill, Shamb-hala Publications Inc., Boston, MA, © Allen Ginsburg, © James Kirkup, and © Curtis Hidden Page.

See Here “There is a river”: Wordsworth pastiche, by Catherine M. Fanshawe, extracted from The Faber Book of Parodies, Simon Brett (ed.), 1984, Faber & Faber.

See Here “Sunday is the dullest day”: T. S. Eliot pastiche, from The Sweeniad, by Myra Buttle (aka Victor Purcell), Secker & Warburg, 1958. Extracted from The Faber Book of Parodies, Simon Brett (ed.), 1984, Faber & Faber.

See Here “Boy, when I saw old Eve”: J. D. Salinger pastiche, from Adam & Eve & Stuff Like That, by Ed Berman. Extracted from The Faber Book of Parodies, Simon Brett (ed.), 1984, Faber & Faber.

See Here “LAMENTATIONS”: 53 Days, from 53 Jours, Hachette-Littératures, 1989, © Georges Perec; published in the U.K. as 53 Days, by Georges Perec, translated by David Bellos, published by Harvill Press, 1994, p. 61, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group, Ltd.; and in the United States as 53 Days, David R. Godine, p. 61, © David Bellos.

A Note About the Author

David Bellos is the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University, where he is also a professor of French and comparative literature. He has won many awards for his translations, including the Man Booker International translator’s award. He received the Prix Goncourt for his biography of Georges Perec and has also written biographies of Jacques Tati and Romain Gary.