for Mike and all

[jochen stremmel]

Thanks for the reference, Mark, the review seems to be well written,
the first paragraphs at least, but it lost me with this one:

"At one point, Bellos quotes with rightful pride a small instance of
his own inventiveness. In Perec’s novel “Life: A User’s Manual,” a
character walks through a Parisian arcade, stopping to look at the
“humorous visiting cards in a joke-shop window.” In Perec’s original
French, one of these cards is: “Adolf Hitler/Fourreur.” A fourreur is
a furrier, but Perec’s joke-shop joke is that it also resembles the
French pronunciation of Führer. So Bellos, in his English version,
rightly translates “fourreur” not as “furrier,” but like this: “Adolf
Hitler/German Lieder.” Bellos’s new multiphonic pun is a travesty, no
doubt about it — and it’s also the most precise translation possible."

Granted, Fourreur is quite a lame joke, a joke-shop joke, but at least
it is slightly homonymous and a profession. German Lieder is nothing
of the sort and to be rightful proud of, and by no means is it the
most precise translation possible.

Jochen

2011/10/29 Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>:
> nytimesbooks nytimesbooks
> Is That a Fish in Your Ear? — Translation and the Meaning of Everything — By
> David Bellos — Book Review