Boyd Tonkin

The power of the translator to break nations

In her wide-ranging study of the translator’s role, Anna Aslanyan tells of how the American interpretation of one Japanese word sealed the fate of Hiroshima

The Dragoman worked as a translator, interpreter and guide. [Getty Images] 
issue 17 July 2021

No one ever raised a statue to a translator, disgruntled adepts of that art sometimes complain. I beg to differ, since I’ve seen one: the handsome monument to the 12th-century scholar-physician Judah ibn Tibbon, ‘patriarch of translators’, beneath the Alhambra in Granada. But if the brokers between languages and cultures still lack many bronze or marble tributes, the books that celebrate their calling have begun to pile higher.

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