Is That a Fish in Your Ear - By Bellos, David Page 0,12

substitute for the original. But they also understand that the teacher used a piece of folk wisdom to say something else that really is true—that only by reading more French will they improve their language skills. The teacher means to spur them into greater assiduity, not to speak the truth about translation.

Students eventually graduate and get jobs, and soon enough some of them start writing book reviews. In those circumstances, when they have to write about a work of foreign literature translated into English and are lost for a phrase to use, they may parrot the warning they first heard at school. In common with all things people say and write, however, the force of the saying that “a translation is no substitute for an original” is completely altered when the context of utterance is changed.

In its new context, it means that the writer of the book review possesses sufficient knowledge of some original to be able to make a judgment that its translation is not a substitute for it. Whether or not the reviewer really has read the original work, the assertion that the translation does not constitute a substitute for it puts the reviewer in charge.

Using the adage in this way obviously affects the meaning of the word substitute. If, for example, I said, “Instant coffee is no substitute for espresso made from freshly ground beans,” I would be wrong, in the sense that the purpose of instant coffee is to serve as a substitute for more laborious ways of making the drink; but also right, as long as the word substitute is understood to mean “the same as,” “as good as,” or “equivalent to.” Instant coffee is clearly not the same as espresso; many people regard it as not as good as espresso; and because preferences in the field of coffee are matters of individual taste, it is not unreasonable to treat powdered coffee as not equivalent to espresso. We do often say all these more explicit things about coffee. But it is not so straightforward when it comes to translation.

People who declare translations to be no substitute for the original imply that they possess the means to recognize and appreciate the real thing, that is to say, original composition as opposed to a translation. Without this ability they could not possibly make the claim that they do. Just as an inability to distinguish two types of coffee would deprive you of any possibility of comparing them, so the ability to discriminate between “a translation” and “an original” is a basic requirement for anyone who wants to claim that one of them is not the same as, equivalent to, or as good as the other.

In practice, we look at the title page, jacket copy, or copyright page of a book or the byline at the bottom of an article to find out whether or not we are reading a translation. But in the absence of such giveaways, are readers in fact able to distinguish, by the taste on their linguistic and literary tongues, whether a text is “original” or “translated”? Absolutely not. Countless writers have packaged originals as translations and translations as originals and gotten away with it for weeks, months, years, even centuries.

Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books appeared to great acclaim in 1762. For many decades, it was held to give precious insight into the ancient culture of the original inhabitants of Europe’s northwestern fringe. Figures as eminent as Napoleon and as learned as the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder were entranced by the authentic folk poetry of the “Gaelic Bard.” But they were wrong. The story of Ossian hadn’t been invented by Celtic poets at all. It was written in English by a minor poet called James Macpherson.

Horace Walpole had a shorter run. In the introduction to the first edition of The Castle of Otranto (1764) he claimed his novel was but a translation of an Italian work first published in 1529, and he promised to make it available if his work met with any success. It did—in fact, it was a bestseller and spawned a whole genre of writing called “Gothic horror.” A second edition was needed, and so the author had to eat humble pie. He could not produce the Italian original, for there was none. He, too, had written his “translation” in English.

Even grander deceptions speckle the history of many literatures. The Letters of a Portuguese Nun, first published in French in 1669, purports to be a translation,