Books about translation and writing
Online courses for translators and interpreters
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Hi Corinne,
thank you for your tips!
Sure, no problem!
The first book that came to my mind was ‘On Writing’. It really is a great read. On the other hand, I remember being distinctely unimpressed by ‘The Elements of Style’. I still don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Thanks, Elaine! That’s great to hear about “On Writing.” I’m actually not a big fan of Stephen King’s novels (not really my genre), but if I had to recommend one book about writing, it would be his! And I’ll forgive you for The Elements of Style
Thank you for this post! I’m definitely adding your suggestions to my reading list. I have an old copy of The Elements of Style that I laugh over now and then; it’s a fun read.
Thanks, Lillian! I agree, maybe it’s weird, but I also break out The Elements of Style now and then for fun!
If you were to ask me to recommend only one book to those embarking on professional translation, it would be Brian Mossop’s ‘Editing and revising for translators’. Its concise discussion of revising translations cuts directly to the heart of the issue of what constitutes an acceptable translation. And what does not.
Honourable runners-up: Chesterman and Wagner’s Socratic dialogue ‘Can theory help translators?’ puts translation theory in its place; Hofstader’s ‘Le Ton Beau de Marot’ is a wonderful, playful exposition of creativity and variation in translation.
What did I actually read first? Impatient, Newmark’s aphoristic ‘Paragraphs on translation’.
Thanks, Douglas! That’s a great suggestion!
I just recently bought “Das Tüpfelchen auf dem i” (German) which is a very useful and concise guide for all things relating to typography.
I don’t have an English book recommendation, but I think many translators have to brush up on their knowledge of typographyical conventions or learn them from scratch. I remember my first weeks as a pretty clueless agency intern fresh out of Translation School. I realized that many things we really should know as translators (proper use of correct dashes, protected spaces, correct quotation marks etc.) are not being taught to translation students. I think about 90% of all translations I have reviewed as a freelancer contain at least one typographical issue. This is a major problem that is hardly ever discussed among translators.
Thanks, Konstantin! It must be something about Germany and typography…my husband is also a typography nerd (he does the layout for my books), and is always upholding German typography guides as the gold standard.
On how to write well, please check The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker. It really is an amazing book. Thanks for your article, by the way.
Thanks, Marco!
Very interesting article. I only read King’s On Writing and liked it, but I’ll look up some of the other titles, as well.
I centralised a few of them in an article of my own: http://mihaelaburuiana.com/translators-as-literary-characters/. I hope you’ll find it useful.
Maybe those who are interested in reading about how to become translators will also like to read books whose characters are translators and interpreters.
Very interesting, thank you!!
Very usefull and interesting article. Thank you. I read Stephen King’s On Writing and this style you have already used? I think translation is an art absolutely.
Here go a few tips on books on writing.
For writing in general, look up Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams. It’s an order of magnitude better than Strunk and White–much more detailed, deeper, and more thorough. The downside, if you can call it that, is that, its very thoroughness and depth make it a lot harder to work through than S&W.
I read about Joseph Williams’ book in You Don’t Say, by John E. McIntyre, the Baltimore Sun’s terrific language blog. This blog introduced me not only to the aforementioned book, but also to Geoffrey Pullum’s ‘gentle savagings’ of S&W. Unsurprisingly, Mr. McIntyre is rather critical of S&W as well.
Mr. McIntyre also wrote The Old Editor Says, a collection of maxims on editing distilled from his decades of experience at the craft. Geared mostly at journalists, this short book is both entertaining and useful.
If you’re into medical/scientific writing, Mimi Zeiger’s Essentials of Writing Biomedical Papers is the best out there. It suffers from the same downsides as Joseph Williams book, but in a higher degree. I haven’t finished working through it yet.
Finally, the standard reference for medical writing is the AMA Manual of Style.
There you go–4 books that will keep you busy, and a blog as a bonus.
I’m a bit late in coming to this, but a couple more which are useful if you work with academic texts are “The Craft of Research” (Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams , the latter of “Style: Towards Clarity and Grace” fame, mentioned above) and Helen Sword’s downright fabulous “Stylish Academic Writing.” I think we translators often forget how much being a writer is part of our work, and to that end we should be constantly doing what good writers do to improve: read. What to read? Anything well-written in whatever fields interest us or that we work in, be it fiction, journalism, academic research, poetry, ANYTHING. Actually, sometimes crossing genre divides can really help give you a fresh perspective and brighten up your language. So if you’re doing a technical environmental translation, take time out with Mary Oliver’s poems, for instance. Finally, as a linguist, I love literature that explores the world of language and celebrates multilingualism. One of my favorite recent reads in this sense has been Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Flood of Fire) which explores the Opium War in a cacophonous symphony of 19th-century nautical English backed by various Southeast Asian languages.
Thanks, Victoria!