Reviews

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Reviews Valentin Shevchuk a a Moscow State Linguistic University, Moscow, Russia Online Publication Date: 08 December 2006

To cite this Article Shevchuk, Valentin(2006)'Reviews',Perspectives,14:2,139 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09076760608669026 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09076760608669026

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Englund Dimitrova, Birgitta. 2005. Expertise and Explicitation in the Translation Process (Benjamins Translation Library 64). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-1670-3. 297 pages. Price: US $ 150; € 125 (hardback). The translation process has been one of the focal points in Translation Studies in the past fifteen years, and the present book addresses this complex problem. The study offers many insights into the nature of the process of translation. The author explores translation as text reproduction and provides detailed analyses of the phases of the translation process, problems and complexities, strategies selected, translation universals, and speci­fic­ally ex­pli­citation. Readers find a comprehensive, thorough and impressive analysis of the views among translation scholars on these issues. The author concentrates on the translation process and the performance represented by the trans­lation task, which is viewed as a monolingual writing task. It is divided into three main phases, namely planning, text generation, and revision. Yet, there are some differ­ences in the distribution and the relative importance of these phases when performances of mono- and bilingual tasks are compared. The book specifies and discusses the differences for each phase in the translation process. The author employs a combination of concurrent verbalizations, i.e. thinkaloud protocols and logging of the writing process by means of the computer, for her empirical data collection and analysis. The text used was a Russian text of 438 words that was translated into Swedish. The results show that professional translators perform faster than beginners; senior professionals are particularly outstanding in this respect – a conclusion that is in striking contrast to earlier studies (by e.g. Jääskeläinen, Jakobsen, and Krings). The author draws interesting conclusions regarding the relative allocation of time for different phases of the process, and she also finds a number of prototypical patterns in professionals’ handling of literal translation. In her discussion of explicitation as a translation universal, Englund Dimitrova singles out two types of this phenomenon: norm-governed and strategic explicitation. She claims that the former is a function of the norm and is normally characteristic of professional translations, whereas the latter is of an ad hoc nature and usually occurs when solving specific problems in the course of the process, thus showing more variation. The author justly stresses that her conclusions are hypothetical because the study involved only one language pair, a limited number of participants (nine), and the source text was brief. She stresses that it was intended as a case study, and consequently explorative and meant for generating hypotheses. Many conclusions made are therefore tentative and need to be further researched. The book is a mine of important information about the specifics of how translation tasks are performed, and as such it is valuable to scholars, teachers and translation trainees in higher learning. Valentin Shevchuk, Moscow State Linguistic University, Moscow, Russia.

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Krisztina Károly & Ágota Fóris (eds.) 2005. New Trends in Translation Studies. In Honour of Kinga Klaudy. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 218 pages. ISBN 963-05-8257-0. Price: HUF 6500; € 40 (hardback). This volume is a tribute to Kinga Klaudy, the founder of translator and interpreter training programs at both graduate and postgraduate levels at university, and one of the prime movers of Translation Studies in Hungary. As the editors, two of Kinga Klaudy’s former students and present-day colleagues put it in their foreword, “Kinga Klaudy has obtained international reputation for her original work in Translation Studies and has become widely recognized as one of the most distinguished scholars of the field. She has devoted her life to the study and teaching of translation and the establishment of Translation Studies in Hungary.” It is not an overstatement to say that without her devoted efforts over several decades, Translation Studies as well as the training of translators and interpreters would be far less advanced than they are in Hungary today. The aim of the volume, as the title suggests, is to give an overview of the state of the art in Translation Studies, of its current trends, methods, and directions. The authors are Kinga Klaudy’s Hungarian and foreign friends and colleagues. Among the latter, we might mention Andrew Chesterman, Anthony Pym, Cay Dollerup, Donald Kiraly, and Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit. Except for two contributions in, respectively, Russian and Hungarian, most articles are in English. These contributions review recent development in translation theory, starting out from and reflecting upon Kinga Klaudy’s work. The congratulatory words of the Hungarian academician Ferenc Kiefer are followed by two parts. The first (Theory of Translation) consists of seven papers discussing theoretical issues in translation theory, such as models and paradigms in translation theory, translators’ strategies, typologies, equivalence, explicitation, terminology, and the training of translators. The five studies in the second part (Analysis of Translation), on the other hand, are case studies of specific translations, analysing samples from Hungarian, English, Finnish, Russian and French. These articles address the issues of translation universals, hermeneutics, tautology, explicitation, and machine translation. Rather than giving an in-depth analysis of each contribution, I shall attempt to illustrate their diversity by listing a few of the key notions and issues addressed by the contributions: strategy, shift, similarity, implicitation, translation universals, risk management, redundancy, processability, multicultural translation, translation teaching, social agency, borrowing, imposition, empowerment, mistrans­lation, tautology, pattern-based, rule-to-rule hypothesis, etc. The concise, yet highly informative, in-depth studies give a clear indication of how fast Translation Studies is evolving. They also testify to the fact that translation theory has become a field in its own right, transgressing the boundaries of the classical disciplines of linguistics, literature, semiotics, her­meneutics, and communication theory. Recent develop­ments in informatics, computer science, program­ming, data handling and storage, robotics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive psychology have widened the scope of translation theory considerably. Therefore, we have every reason to believe that the 21st century will mark a boom in translation and translation theory – not only because of the novel needs and exigencies emerging with the expansion of the European Union.

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This impressive volume will surely be of great use to any scholar in the human and social sciences, and will certainly raise the interest at all levels of study from under­graduates to established scholars. All readers should find topics of utmost relevance to their own work and directions inspiring further research. Sándor Albert, University of Szeged, Hungary. **********

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Sidiropoulou, Maria. 2004. Linguistic Identities through translation. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi. 186 pages. ISBN: 90-420-0990-X. Price: € 40, US $ 50 (paper­back). This is the twenty-third publication in the series “Approaches to Translation Studies” and addresses the need for a systematic approach to the study of identity. The book focuses on the English-Greek translation paradigm and explores the question whether translation and contrastive analysis of source and target texts can provide data for the study of linguistic identities. The book is structured in three parts, each looking at the relation between trans­lation and identity in a different genre. In an introductory chapter preceding the three parts, Maria Sidiropoulou explores the overlapping areas of translation and identity. She claims that identity is visible in the linguistically inscribed preference in the construction of discourses and in language choice. Genre discourses are highly conventionalized and thus minimize the role of the receiver and sender as subjective agents in the production of texts. It is in these conventions that Sidiropoulou finds the regularity that gives translation researchers the opportunity to study aspects of linguistic preference across cultures. Linguistic identity is focused on through the notion of linguistic preference, which is considered a manifestation of identity and as such contributes information about target readership profiles. Linguistic preference refers in this book to grammatical preference, to the culture-specific way in which a target language conceptualizes universal notions, to assumptions about effective persuasion strategies and about discourse style in relation to audience participation and involvement. The issue of equivalence in translation is discussed because equivalent target ver­sions allow for observation of preferred patterns of linguistic behaviour and point to culture-specific assumptions in the alternative conceptualization of reality, thus providing insight into the target language identity. Part I, Inscription of Ideology in Press Translation examines preferences in the translation of particular linguistic phenomena from the English to the Greek press. Sidiropoulou takes as her point of departure the modifications of connectives (adversative, causal connections) and time adverbials in news translation for the study of mediation and the inscription of ideology in the target text. She believes that awareness of potential differences between language pairs may be enhanced by tracing the differences in the treatment of conjunctive cohesive devices that ensure appropriateness in a target text.

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In the analysis of cohesive devices, Sidiropoulou observes that the Greek texts have a tendency towards a contrastive/concessive network, materialized in shifts made explicit and further enforced by additional contrastive elements and by the creation of contrasts that do not exist in the source text. She states that these preferences in Greek may be attributed to readership type. Translators of news items are aware that they are addressing readers who are “more willing to take up the role of the denier, who are used to perceiving the world in terms of contrasts, which they are expected to decode and process, and who appreciate or are fascinated by tracing logical sequencing and contrasts in discourses” (p. 33). The author claims that contrast creating intention in news reporting is a twofold process – on the one hand it reflects the readership addressed, and on the other it creates target reader positions, thus enforcing ideology. Greek texts also display a preference for balance formats as opposed to the lop-sided format, which may be attributed to the translator’s intention to maintain the suspense, and an effect of unexpectedness. Such intention is assumed to be an indication of an interpersonal, rather than a transactional approach in interaction. Furthermore, ideological perspectives are noted to reflect in the treatment of time in Greek and in English news reporting. This is evident particularly in the tendency for future orientation in Greek, as opposed to a clear preference for past time in English. The elimination of time approximation or additional temporal specifications in favour of more general time in Greek points to a stronger oppositional view of reality. The lack of accuracy in time specification is an indication of interpersonal involvement between translator and audience in Greek news reports. Translator interference in the treatment of time reveals linguistically inscribed patterns of behaviour, motivated both by audience profiles and by intention to module audience beliefs. Ad translating is another area of interest for the study of ideological or cultural practices in discourse. The author elaborates on gender-sensitive aspects of linguistic variation in English-Greek advertising language. She draws attention to the identity of readers as an essential variable that creates a motivation for variation in translator beha­viour, visible in the tendency to raise tenor in business-oriented translation and to lower tenor in the case of cosmetics advertising. Such translational data indicates conformity to socio-cultural stereotypes. In the analysis of testimonial discourse across Greek and English versions of texts, the findings indicate the patterns of preference observed in previous fields studied. Awareness of cross-cultural differences in the construction of testimonial discourse is an important factor in translation, because persuasion strategies are adjusted according to these. Sidiropoulou notices a strong discursive preference in Greek political texts and a concern for establishing a different level of communicative importance with respect to the source of informed opinion. Both cognitive and cultural aspects of language use can describe the nature of the translator’s mediation between the English and the Greek cultural environments. The degree of interference is likely to vary according to the mediators’ assumption about readership and interest in the topic. For high supposed interest, interference is likely to be low, whereas for an assumed low interest translators value appro­priate­ness more than accuracy and feel free to modify source discourse structures.

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Starting from the assumption that the cognitive and cultural aspects of the nature of the metaphor are a central issue in the study of intercultural communication, Sidiropoulou explores normative preferences in the translation of metaphorical mappings in news reporting. Normative behaviour in the rendition of metaphors into Greek is influenced by cognitive parameters, such as the assumed psychological remoteness of readers from the topic presented. She thus concludes that the treatment of metaphors in news translation is ideologically constrained. Part I concludes that “linguistic identities in news reporting are assumed to be constructed through ideological assumptions prevalent in source and target versions of texts and reflected in discourses through linguistic realizations generating the assumptions” (p. 85). The potential educational aspects of these findings are underlined in that students should be made aware of the extent to which source and target language structures carry ideological meaning across and reflect audience profiles. Part II, Readership Identities through EU Discourse Diversity, explores the potential of official versions of EU texts, in both English and Greek, to provide information on linguistic identities. Although EU texts are not seen by the author as a reliable source for the observation of linguistic identity, Sidiropoulou notices that there are variables, such as topic-comment organization and information structure, that can be analytic tools in revealing preferred patterns and thus disclosing various conceptualizations of reality. Part III, Intercultural Variation in Literature and Theatre Translation, explores the extent to which target literary texts and theatre production may contribute to the study of linguistic identities. It expands on intercultural variation between ST and TT versions in English-Greek and Greek-English literary translation situations. The author points out that “translation has been viewed as a process of mapping conceptual structures of one language onto those of another” (p. 110). Thus it may reveal not only alternative conceptualizations of the world, but also what factors shape and constrain such conceptualizations. Metaphoric thinking and the treatment of metaphor and metonymy occupy a significant part in this section because they are culture-specific as are the domains of experience, and because translation itself is seen as an example of metaphorical mapping from one language domain to another. The author focuses on translations of English romantic poetry into Greek, contrasts metaphors in the source text to their rendition in the target text, and discusses the emerging pattern of behaviour in translation. She acknow­ledges that psychologically immediate topics, by which she means those considered to endanger one’s wellbeing, disallow metaphors into target texts, whereas psychologically remote topics pose no such barrier. This is in accordance with metaphor treatment in press translation and leads Sidiropoulou to conclude that Greek does not tolerate use of metaphors along the axis of realism as easily as English does. In a subchapter titled The Cultural Orientation: Minoritizing Translation, Sidiropoulou explores literary translation from Greek into English and maintains that when directionality in translation changes, certain linguistic preferences remain on the same language side. The English target text displays the reverse tendencies in the treatment of linguistic phenomena to those observed in the English-Greek direction. These findings suggest that systematic types of

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interference in the target data may be considered a manifestation of a target-linguistic identity rather than a reflection of the explicitation tendency. Although domesticating issues concern cultural values rather than linguistic preferences, they presuppose awareness of preferred linguistic traits in source and target environments. This conclusion arises from an inspiring contrastive study of the level of tolerance to metaphoring, of the illocutionary force treatment, of argumentation strategies and of foreignizing and domesticating devices in the English source text. The choice of theatre is motivated by the potential of theatre translation to create appropriate discourse structures that can ensure audience response. In the case of translation for the stage, the translator’s concern for explicitation is assumed to be less strong, owing to other factors that solve some explicitation issues (acting, visual code, sound effects, etc.). Therefore, performance translation reflects with more clarity tendencies that are part of linguistic identity. The focus is once more on cohesive devices and the same tendencies manifested in press translation are maintained in theatre translation. In the Concluding Remarks, Sidiropoulou asserts that “the flow of information and ideas has been from linguistics (in monolingual and contrastive studies) to translation studies” (p. 169). The book shows that translation studies can contribute its own point of view to the study of linguistic issues in order to clarify common goals: intercultural understanding, linguistic identity awareness, etc. In sum, Maria Sidiropoulou’s study of linguistic identity through translation appeals to translation scholars, students and practitioners, as well as linguists in general. She brings new aspects of translation and identity into focus and formulates hypotheses that can serve as starting point for future research into the shaping of identity through translation. Xu Jianzhong Technological University College, Tianjin, China. ********** Rui Carvalho Homem & Ton Hoenselaars (eds.) 2004. Translating Shakespeare for the Twenty-First Century. Amsterdam &-New York: Rodopi. 269 pages. ISBN 90-420- 1721-X. Price: € 60. The scholarly quality of this collection of essays by fifteen critics is up to the usual standard of the Rodopi Studies in Literature series, with a most useful index and almost unim­peachable typography (I only noticed two typos, one on page 157 and one on top of page 179). The ‘21st century’ dimension in this is not so much related to any new way of translating Shakespeare’s plays as to new approaches to translation studies and new directions in Shakespearian criticism: translations are now perceived as autonomous texts, and Shakespeare’s plays too, the original texts par excellence, were more often than not adaptations or rewritings of previously existing material. The “play with foreign languages and national stereotypes” to be found in them (p. 5) testifies to Shakespeare’s interest in linguistic and cultural differences, which are the very basis of translation.

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The essays, almost all of them written by practising translators who are also scholars in the field of translation studies, fall into two distinct parts, ‘Old and New World Shakespeares,’ and ‘Portuguese Shakespeares – A Casebook.’ This might lead readers to surmise that some tribute to the scholar and translator Luis Cardim, who introduced Shakespeare’s unabridged texts to Portuguese audiences in the early twentieth century, may have been the starting point of the collection. If this should be accompanied by some suspicion that the Portuguese part is likely to be less interesting, we would be completely wrong. With a possible qualification about Maria Afonso’s modest insistence on her not translating verse into verse because she is ‘not a poet’ and Gomes da Torre dismissing theoretical writings as lacking practical relevance with the only exception of Peter Newmark, contributors in this part too formulate illuminating comments based on their translating experience. Maria Joao Pires calls upon Berman, Jerome and Benjamin to comment on her translation of Much Ado About Nothing and how she had to change the letter of the text in order to convey its intention (which I think is the crux of the tired pseudo-opposition between source- and target-oriented translations of literary works); in a slightly grandiloquent manner she points to the parallel between the process of creative writing and the process of translating, which “pushes the work out of the boundaries of the said into the creative energy where the work was conceived, where the author’s dialogue with the infinite space of language originally took place” (p. 188). Antonio Feijo provides critical insights into the text of Hamlet as he emphasises the importance of understanding the literal meaning of words first. Fatima Vieira points out that in Portuguese (as in all Romance languages) Ariel’s indeterminate gender cannot be preserved, while Rui Carvalho Homem explores Cleopatra’s ‘gypsiness’ and the potential impact on audiences. In the first part Serpieri outlines such a daunting task for Shakespeare’s translators that it is truly a source of wonder that as many should still venture into such mined territories. Shurbanov interrogates the possibility of translating Shakespeare into Bulgarian, with special reference to humour and to power relations. Déprats, who has now acquired a leading position as a translator of Shakespeare into French both for the stage and for the page, compares the respective merits of translations from a historical or from a modern standpoint, concluding that the modern approach conveys the immediacy that Shakespeare’s audiences would have experienced, and is thus closer to historical truth, too. Hoenselaars brings together the very first performances / adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays into the Low Countries in the first half of the seventeenth century and current developments that similarly tend to emphasise contemporary cultural and political relevance. Delabatista combines theoretical considerations with a historical survey of shifts in translating fashions (with Dutch translations as his corpus), contrasting philological orthodoxy and ‘contempo­rary acculturation’. Maik Hamburger considers the translator’s work on language, and parti­cu­lar­ly on metrial patterns and deviant occurrences. Verdaguer discusses Moratin’s late eighteenth-century Spanish translation, and how in spite of his many misgivings or down­right objections to Shakespeare’s tasteless departures from classical rules (which he abundant­ly illustrated in his notes) he still provided a remarkably close rendering of the original text. Using

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his experience of Brazilian productions, Roberto O’Shea examines the traps and pitfalls of stage rendering: what will be heard? how can we avoid the most unwanted comic echo of an advert in the translation of a line of words like ‘free for ever’? To sum up, this is the kind of book that is worth much more than what a blasé critic might tend to think at first. Even though the field explored has already been extensively covered, it adds significant material that is valuable both to literary critics and to students of translation. Whether it can be at all useful to translators is another matter, which applies to all forms of meta-translation. I think it can, but is there world and time? Christine Pagnoulle, University of Liège, Belgium.

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********** Upton, Carole-Anne (ed.) 2000. Moving Target. Theatre Translation and Cultural Relocation. Manchester: St. Jerome. 172 pages. ISBN 1-900650-27-4. Price: £ 22 (paperback). The starting point of the volume under review, which originated from a conference held at the University of Hull in 1997 entitled True to Form: On Stage Translation, is the conundrum that is the study of theatre translation in Britain. While for centuries theatre has been the most receptive of all art forms to foreign ideas and works – to a much larger extent than publishing, film or television – the practice of translation and the figure of the translator have hardly been considered at all by practitioners and scholars alike (p. 2). British sensibility has tended to underplay rather than explore the foreignness of its inspirations and sources, with a consequent preference for translation practices geared towards domestication, appropriation and cultural relocation. This book is a very welcome and much needed first step in exploring the role of translation in theatre production. With the aim of celebrating ‘the neglected art’ of translating for performance (p. 12), editor Carole-Anne Upton opens the floor for a discussion of translation for the theatre which encompasses theatre practitioners, scholars and translators working from a variety of languages and cultural specificities: from the censorship of the German Democratic Republic (pp. 127-139), through the use of dialect translation in Scotland and Quebec (pp. 25-35) to the untranslatability of culture-specific referents or ‘realia’ of Eastern European theatre (pp. 139-151). Although the 12 contributions in the book are grouped into three sections – Identifying the target; Translating performance and Sources of resistance – a number of key themes seem to run across the papers beyond these groupings and develop into a debate which is of crucial concern to theatre, translation and performance studies. The first of these themes is the question of terminology. The difficulty in pinning down the methodological and conceptual differences between producing a ‘translation’ and an ‘adaptation’, indicated by the translation scholars Susan Bassnett (Bassnett 1985) and more recently Sirrku Aaltonen (Aaltonen 2000),

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is seen here from the perspective of practitioners as a pragmatic question, albeit a problematic one, of the personal preference of the translator. While for Lindsay Bell the dilemma between reproduction or creative freedom lies in the term ‘adaptation’ itself (p. 73), Martin Bowman sees his work with Bill Findlay as ‘a translation and not an adaptation’ (p. 28), because seeing it as an adaptation would lessen the value of Scots as a fully-fledged language of translation. The question of terminology is then explored in detail in Eva Espasa’s article, which examines “the changing notion of ‘performability’ in translation” (p. 49). Controversial terms such as ‘playability’ and ‘speakability’ are seen by Espasa as useful working definitions which become problematic when considered in an abstract relation to a dramatic text, but serve a functional purpose if used in conjunction with the style of presentation of a specific theatre company (p. 52). A familiar theme to the current debate on intercultural theatre, and one which is present in this collection, is, in Rustom Bharucha’s words, the question of ‘figuring out the “inter”, the space in between polarities’ (Bharucha 1993: 241). In discussions about trans­lation, this corresponds to the encounter and juxtaposition of the alien and the familiar. With Bharucha, the editor views the foreign and the domestic not in opposition but ‘at opposite poles of a single spectrum of sophisticated possibilites’ (p. 7). The dialogic relation­ship of distance and complicity with the audience which David Johnston has already championed in previous writings on translation for the stage (Johnston 1996) continues to feature prominently among his concerns in his dazzling article on the translation of Spanish playwright Valle-Inclán (p. 90). Through the use of a language that emphasises disfluency, Valle-Inclán creates a relationship of simultaneous engagement and distance with the spectator which is rendered by Johnston with a series of devices to maintain the stage-audience complicity while still preserving the foreignness of the source culture (pp. 89-90). Another strand of this collection which taps into current concerns of theatre and performance studies is the tendency of translation for performance of working against the fixity of the written text. Kate Cameron addresses the question of the semiotic tension between written text and performance (Elam 2003) in her work on the translation and mise en scéne of French feminist writer Hélène Cixous, by showing how an improvisational strategy, based on voice and speech rhythm, is closer to the féminine unconscious of Cixous and thus produces a target performance that is closer to the original text and to the political agenda behind it (p. 101). The relationship between text and performance is then picked up again by Mark Batty in his meticulous study of Samuel Beckett’s self-translation. Here the debate moves to questions of competing authority of textuality and performance (Rouse 1992). Batty shows Beckett as an author who situates himself between written and performance text, exercising authority over both form and content and producing plays that ‘contain, within the black ink on white paper of their written texts, the patterns and frameworks for their performance text’ (p. 71). In a passage that seems to invite the application of functional theories to translation for performance, Upton reminds us that translation strategy is determined by reception aesthetics (p. 8). However, when between the culture doing the reception and that being received there is a history of colonialism and immigration, the values negotiated through translation go well beyond aesthetic

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considerations, and simple questions such as what to translate or whether to translate at all become political ones. In her quest to raise the profile of Latin American theatre in the US, American translator Kirsten Nigro sees a strategy of ‘resistance’, similar to that of feminist translator Sherry Simon, as the only way of controlling a stereotyped reception of Mexican theatre by US audiences (p. 123). In the captivating opening article of the collection, Derrick Cameron offers us a different type of resistance in the practice of ‘tradaptation’ by BritishAsian director Jatinder Verma (p. 17). By taking on the major texts of European drama and re-imagining them filtered through Indian aesthetics, history and culture, Verma reverses the process of cultural appropriation of Eastern theatre practice by the West but also produces an intercultural experience. In this process of ‘negotiating foreignness’ (p. 21), Verma’s theatre achieves the most desired effect of all translation: a process of constant redefinition of the contemporary target culture. Works cited Aaltonen, S. 2000. Time-sharing on Stage: Drama Translation in Theatre and Society. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. Bassnett, S. 1985. Ways Through the Labyrinth: Strategies and Methods for Translating Theatre Texts. In: T. Hermans (ed.) The Manipulation of Literature. London, Croom Helm: 97-103. Bharucha, R. 1993. Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture. London, Routledge. Elam, K. 2003. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London, Methuen. Johnston, D. (ed.) 1996. Stages of Translation. Bath, Absolute Classics. Rouse, J. 1992. Textuality and Authority in Theatre and Drama: Some Contemporary Possibilities. In: J. G. Reinelt & J. R. Roach (eds.) Critical Theory and Performance. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press: 146-57. Cristina Marinetti, Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick. ********** Pöchhacker, Franz. 2004. Introducing Interpreting Studies. London & New York: Routledge. 264 pages. ISBN: 0415268877. Price: US $ 25.95 (paperback). The 1990s witnessed a phenomenal growth of Translation Studies as an independent discipline, whilst the opening years of the 21st century ushers in a tremendous development of Interpreting Studies as an emerging discipline in its own right, which finds its vivid expression in the publication of two major books, namely, The Interpreting Studies Reader (2001), a collection of seminal contributions to the field and a representation of the best scholarship, and Introducing Interpreting Studies (2004), a companion to the Reader and a panoramic overview of the young discipline. While the former is more of a stock-taking nature, the latter provides an authoritative account of the discipline from the perspective of an experienced practitioner-researcher who has lived through much of its development in the last few decades. As such, the book is bound to give scope and

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substance to the discipline in the making, and would-be interpreting scholars will definitely benefit from the vision and insight of the author. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, ‘Foundations’, consisting of five chapters, presents the reader with a comprehensive overview of the field in terms of concepts, evolu­tion, approaches, paradigms and models. Chapter 1 briefly charts out the theoretical territory of interpreting studies by introducing some basic concepts and terms. What’s worth mentioning here is that special efforts have been made to define interpreting in such a way as to reflect the distinct features of interpreting in all its manifestations. Chapter 2 sketches the historical development of interpreting studies, highlighting the various events, schools of thought, and pioneers that have helped to promote the professionalization and academization of the discipline. With the object of interpreting studies in mind and proceeding from a historical perspective, Chapters 3 to 5 review the major disciplinary, conceptual, and methodological approaches to interpreting studies, outline the main paradigms or research traditions and their mutual relationship, and report on efforts to model interpreting at different levels. Part II, ‘Selected topics and research’, comprising four chapter, reviews some of the dominant themes of research and summarizes the major findings of some influential empirical studies. Thanks to his intimate familiarity with the field of enquiry and his thorough and critical reading of the relevant literature, Pöchhacker is able to single out ‘Process’, ‘Product and performance’, ‘Practice and profession’, and ‘Pedagogy’ as the four major topics that have attracted considerable academic interests to date, and devotes a chapter to the discussion of each of them. Focusing on process-oriented research, which is mainly informed by cognitive sciences, Chapter 6 draws our attention to insights generated from studies on bilingualism, simultaneity, comprehension, memory, production, input variables, and strategies. Chapter 7 looks at investigations into interpreting as a product and a communicative event. The notions of discourse, source-target correspondence, effect, role and quality are highlighted as the useful conceptual tools to analyze the interpreter’s product and performance. As an academic enquiry into a profession with an obvious service function, interpreting research takes its origins and inspirations in the personal accounts of the first generation of self-taught interpreters. However, with the increasing professional­ization of interpreting, there emerges a similarly increasing trend in empirical research in this respect. Hence, Chapter 8 explores the profession-oriented literature in terms of history, settings, standards, competence, technology, ecology, and sociology. Passing on the knowledge and skills of interpreting to the next generation has been one of the overarching concerns of those involved in the training of interpreters ever since interpreting became a recognized profession in the early twentieth century. Considering the fact that most literature in this domain is concerned with personal experience of the organization of interpreting classes and that little systematic research has been generated so far, Pöchhacker identifies five areas that merit the attention of interpreter educators, namely curriculum design, selection, teaching, assessment, and meta-level training. Part III, ‘Directions’, which is made up of a stand-alone chapter, winds up the survey of the field by analyzing its current trends of development, pinpointing the critical issues that are going to influence the growth of interpreting studies,

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and providing orientation for aspiring students dedicated to the study of interpreting. Pöchhacker believes that the two words that best summarize the current trends in the evolution of the field are Growth and Convergence. Nevertheless, the field is confronted with six critical issues (i.e. manpower, motivation, means, market, methods, materials) and two ‘mega-trends’ such as global­ization and technologization, which inevitably exert a great influence on the move­ment of the field from quantitative to qualitative methods of inquiry. In the final section of the book, a basic orientation about how to get started in interpreting research and how to get help is offered to those who are new to the field, but about to make a contribution to the existing body of knowledge in interpreting studies. One of the most outstanding features of the book is that it provides a comprehensive ‘map of the interpreting studies landscape’ (p. 205) by charting out the theoretical domain of the field, reviewing the state-of-the-art, and projecting future directions. If it is not improper to say that previous research into interpreting is more on an ad-hoc basis and reflects personal preferences, then the present volume testifies to the ascendancy of the young discipline by carrying out a systematic review in a detached manner and presenting us with a surprisingly rich body of literature. The wealth of literature is a twoedged sword. Confronted with such a tremendous wealth of information, a less seasoned researcher may be overwhelmed by triviality and lose sight of the global view of the field, while a well-trained mind can always capture the central themes and common values of a seemingly diverging field of study without sacrificing its vivacity and diversity. Obviously Pöch­hacker belongs to the latter. In his attempt to present a ‘synthetic’ and ‘analytical’ overview of the discipline in all its complexity (p.3), he virtually expands the traditional view of regarding interpreting as the ‘oral rendering of spoken message’ by emphasizing the feature of immediacy so as to include signed language interpreting and the less prestigious but increasingly important cousin of conference interpreting – community interpreting. With the expanded terrain of study, it is even more difficult, if not impossible, to gain an overview of the field and, at the same time, to do full justice to all modalities of interpreting. But the author has done a brilliant job in seeking ‘unity in diversity’ (p.1) by creating many ‘signposts’ such as paradigms, models, process, performance etc. in his review of the theoretical foundations and selected topics. The book also serves a gap-filling function by devoting a chapter to pedagogy, which was unfortunately left out in The Interpreting Studies Reader (2001) for lack of ‘solid research’ (see The Interpreting Studies Reader, pp. 10-11). Though there is still ‘little systematic investigation’ in this direction (p. 177), there is no denying that the teaching of interpreting and interpreter education was, is, and will always be a dominant theme for those who are involved in the teaching of interpreting, and it plays an important part in the institutionalization of interpreter training. David Sawyer’s The Integration of Curriculum and Assessment in Interpreter Education: A Case Study (2001) is an outstanding example of the efforts and contributions made by the pedagogically-oriented researchers. The inclusion of pedagogy literature not only completes the ‘map’ of the interpreting studies landscape but also encourages the interpreting-teaching community to make collective efforts to make pedagogy worth its while in interpreting studies.

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For a book such as Pöchhacker’s Introducing Interpreting Studies, which is largely a summary of the findings of empirical studies informed by cognitive sciences and linguistics, one might expect a dry and abstract piece of reading. Nothing could be further from reality. With its highly accessible and engaging style, the book is really a delight to read. This style is further enhanced by the reader-friendly design. Each of the five chapters in Part I is featured by a lead-in paragraph, a list of main points, a summary, sources and further reading, and suggestions for further study, while each of the four chapters in Part II ends with further reading devoted to each key topic covered in the chapter. Though the bibliography is more of a classic kind and contains mainly the most-often quoted titles, it is compensated by Internet links which is a boon of our time. The author index and subject index further add to the features of the book and provide the research-minded readers with handy tools. If there should be any disadvantages about the book, the only thing that comes to mind is that in places the text is somewhat schematic, especially when it comes to the summary of the findings of some empirical studies. But given the nature of the work and the scope of the book, this is not necessarily a drawback. Anyway, the reader is always directed to a fuller reading of the relevant literature in Further reading or Bibliography or Internet Links. All in all, the book is an ambitious, well-informed and well-researched piece of work. It not only provides an excellent introductory text to would-be interpreting scholars, but also significantly boosts the development of interpreting studies in general. It is a concrete step forward in interpreting research. We can safely say that, with the new-found momentum fuelled by the publication of such a work, interpreting studies will soon establish itself firmly as a new discipline and will, in the near future, shake off the labelling of ‘doorstep interdisciplinarity’. Wang Shaoxiang, Foreign Languages Institute, Fujian Teachers University, Fuzhou, China. ********** Buenker, Josef F. 2005. The Interpreter’s Guide to the Vehicular Accident Lawsuit. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 176 pages. ISBN 1-85359-781-3. Price: ₤ 24.95; US $ 44.95 (paperback). This books deals with vehicular accident lawsuits (i.e. lawsuits following traffic accidents), the most common type of lawsuit in the United States of America. It is primarily intended for court interpreters who are not fluent – or at least not confident of their fluency – in English. This makes the book both topical and relevant for multilingual and multicultural migrant communities in many countries, since cross-cultural and cross-language migration and consequently interaction are found in many parts of the world. Although there is a number of books on legal translation and interpreting on the Translation Studies market, Josef F. Buenker’s work offers a new field with its clear focus on vehicular accidents and thereby fills a gap in the literature otherwise concerned with e.g. court interpreting, translation of official legal documents, etc.

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The book is structured in the following sections and chapters: Preface; ‘An Introduction to the Vehicular Accident Lawsuit’; ‘Types of Vehicular Accident Lawsuits’; ‘Participation of the Interpreter in Vehicular Accident Lawsuits’; ‘Recurring Witnesses and Potential Testimony’; ‘Non-Recurring Witnesses’; ‘Expert Witnesses’; and Appendices. The book covers a very wide range of vehicular lawsuits, e.g. auto-auto accidents, auto-pedestrian accidents, auto-truck accidents, livestock accidents (p. 12-28); it has a fine definition of the term “vehicular accidents’ (p. 10) and even specifies what is meant by a number of related legal notions, such as ‘uninsured motorists claims’ (p. 28-29), ‘product liability’ (p. 29), and clarifies what may follow design and manufacturing defects (p. 29-31). All this is necessary background knowledge, which Josef F. Buenker, a practicing lawyer, himself possesses in abundance. He is thus well qualified to provide all the vehicular legal information that might be of importance to newcomers to interpreting. It is certainly praiseworthy that specialists in fields other than Translation Studies try their hand in the complicated area of translation. Among other things, Josef F. Buenker reminds readers of rules that are sometimes overlooked by professional interpreters as petty, although he calls attention to the fact that they are sometimes quite significant: it is pertinent that “the interpreter should sit between the court reporter and the witness, because the court reporter will be listening to the interpreter and not the witness” (p. 50); it is also worth stressing that “it is necessary to interpret the response for each individual, even if they respond in unison. If the interpreter has six settling individuals responding ‘Yes’, she must say ‘yes’ six times” (p. 59); it is equally important that “the interpreter must be familiar with the translations of ranks and titles into English” when “called to travel to a foreign country to interpret the testimony of the responding and investigating police officers” (p. 93). If we try to construct a hierarchy of rules and consider those cited minor ones, the basic rule for interpreters should be: “you should not have any information that is not told to the attorney” (p. 34). It is slightly exasperating that the author repeats himself or at least states the same idea again, although the intention may be to make sure that readers take note. For example, Buenker mentions note-taking skills as a means of keeping track of information and the best means of ensuring that interpreters do their job conscientiously (pp. 34 and 37). The cliché that an interpreter serves as a “conduit between the interviewer and the party … for questions and answers” is encountered on both pages 33 and 50. The book’s forte is the author’s clear definitions of such courtroom terms as ‘hearsay’ (p. 77), ‘mental anguish’ (p. 75), ‘physical and mental impairment’ (p. 69-70), ‘intersectional collision’ (p. 96), even when the terms are used extensively in everyday language, for example ‘jay-walking’ (p. 98), or a ‘black box’ (p. 101). The appendixes contain illustrative legal language material: there are twelve examples, including ‘the Plaintiff’s original petition’, ‘the Defendant’s original answer’, ‘the Defendant interrogation of the Plaintiff’, ‘Medical authorization’, etc., with ‘the Jury’s verdict’ to crown it all. In sum, since courtroom interpreting is one of the dominant interpreting fields, and the number of people involved in and affected by it grow day by

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day, I find that this book ought to have a large professional audience among court interpreters, practicing lawyers, and translation scholars. Vladimir Khairoulline, Bashkir State University, Ufa, Russia. **********

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Li Nanqiu. 2006. 中国科学翻译史 [The History of Science Translation in China]. Hefei: University of Science and Technology of China Press (96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei 230026, China). Xv + 651pages. ISBN 7-312-01177-2. Price: RMB 160 The History of Science Translation in China is a chronological and systematic study of science translation in China from ancient times to 1949. Compiling such a history is very hard because the author must devote years of efforts in sorting and summarizing the enormous amounts of various fragmentary records. The author defines science translation as all but religious and literary translation. The book is the first one in China to cover the history of science translation, including both interpreting and written translation, which is a great contribution to Translation Studies the world over. The content of the book is wide-ranging and accurate. The book comprises three parts: the history of science interpreting in China, the history of science translation in China into Chinese, and the history of science translation in China from Chinese. The author collects and studies all relevant materials. It not only tells the brief account of the lives of interpreters and translators, their activities in science translation, the contents of the main translation works, and the institutions of interpreter/translator training. It also discusses the features of science translation of each period: the bibliographies, the abstracts, the quantity of the science books translated, and the unity of translated terms and bilingual science dictionaries. It probes into both government and non-government translation as well as publication organizations. It deals with translation both into and from Chinese, and it explores the influence of the two-way science translation. The languages tackled in the book include nearly all the main languages in the world. What’s more, the book divides the science translation history into 6 periods: the dependent (206 BC-907), the embryonic (1573-1795), the growing (1821-1911), the shaping (1912-1949), the special (1950-1966), and the overall developing periods (1978-), but this book only discusses the first four. All the academic contents are based on the understanding and analysis of great amounts of historical records. All these convincing results prove the author’s responsibility and vigorous scientific approach. It is interesting to note two special characteristics in the history of translating into Chinese: 1) the very early translators are not Chinese, but foreigners from the neighboring countries who brought to China not only Buddhist sutra but also medicine, mathematics and astronomy; 2) there is cooperation between Chinese and their foreign colleagues (‘foreigner speaking and Chinese notetaking’), the typical pair of which is Matthieu Ricci (1552-1610) and Xu Guangqi (1562-1633). The fascinating thing in the history of science translation in China is that

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the foreign missionaries, while doing their missionary work, brought science to China. The fact that many foreign missionaries came to China also demonstrates that China has been a magnanimous country, which, in my opinion, lays a solid foundation for China’s quick development. It was a common practice in translation from Chinese that the translators were mainly foreign missionaries in China or sinologists who once worked in China. An early example of this was Martino Martini (1614-1661), an Italian missionary coming to China in 1643, whose masterpieces are Sinicae Historix Decas Prima and Novus Atlas Sinensis, published in Amsterdam in 1659 and in 1655. Of the many famous translators since then, a more recent exponent of the trend is Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak (1889-1954, Dutch sinologist, coming to China in 1912). Why so many foreigners did their translation (in collaboration with Chinese scholars) in China remains fascinating. Even in modern times, China was way behind the western countries, but most Chinese still believed that China was the greatest. We know this from the very name of the country, Zhong Guo, which means ‘the country in the centre of the world’. Hence, it was usually thought unnecessary for Chinese to learn foreign languages. Still, many Chinese scholars knew the realities and tried to make their country strong by learning from the West – and by making friends with the missionaries and cooperating with them in their translation activities. Translation from Chinese was mainly done by sinologists from other countries. Among the few Chinese translaters were Gu Hongming (1857-1882) and Lin Yutang (1895-1976), who both studied and worked in other countries for many years. Chinese interpreters could do two-way interpreting, but it was hard for them to translate both ways, which proves a saying: The great achievements in translation lie in translating into the mother tongue. There is usually a slight blemish in white jade, and this book is no exception. The History of Science Translation in China lacks the period from 220 to 581, that covers the Three Kingdoms, the Western and Eastern Jin Dynasties, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties in Chinese history, and it discusses only little military, educational and science communication. It is our hope that Li, on the basis of the book, would explore much more historical data, in order to make a more profound contribution to the study of the history of translation in China. Still, Li’s book deserves much praise, as it is the first attempt at charting the long history of translation in China. By doing this, it is a great contribution to translation history studies in the world. Xu Jianzhong, College of Foreign Languages, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, P. R. China.

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Weissbort, Daniel & Astradur Eysteinsson (eds.) 2006. Translation – Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 664 pages. ISBN 0-19-871199-9. Price: £ 65 (hardback). In comparison with most other readers in translation studies, such as Lawrence Venuti’s well-known The Translation Studies Reader (2000/2005), which includes extracts from major works in translation theory from 1900 to the present, this impressive volume is much more complex and comprehensive. The editors state it this way: “The aim of this book is to illuminate the essential activity of translation from a number of perspectives: historical and contemporary, theoretical and practical. At the same time, the contents of the present volume speak in many modes and voices to literary and cultural history, and to cross-cultural relations through the ages” (p. v). The “activity of translation” is to be taken literally, as the aim of the book is to present a vast number of reflections on actual translations (predominantly literary) into English from antiquity to the present by translators themselves, whether they be merely practitioners or both practitioners and theorists/critics. These reflections are most pertinent­ly articulated in translators’ prefaces, letters and reviews, which make up most of this volume, accompanied by examples of the translators’ actual translations. The overall point is to demonstrate how much British translation theory takes place in contexts of actual practice, eventually pulling together a “sizeable world of translation” (p. v). The book contains two main parts: Part I: From Antiquity to Modern Times, and Part II: The Twentieth Century. Part I is further divided into sections entitled “From Cicero to Caxton”, “From the Reformation and the Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century” and “The Nineteenth Century”, and Part II is divided into “From Pound to Nabokov” and “Recent and Contemporary Writings”. The introduction provides a presentation and discussion of both the Hebrew and Greek Genesis accounts of the Tower of Babel, followed by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton’s mid-nineteenth-century translation and a contemporary previously unpublished translation by Stavros Deligiorgis. The purpose is to set off the Babel story as a leitmotif throughout the volume, as more Babel translations and discussions keep turning up now and again in the book. It would be going too far to go into detail with the contents of every section, so let me here just sketch out some important names and issues discussed. First of all, each section provides an introduction to the historical period and relevant issues. Then each translator is presented before he or she is called upon to speak. As previously mentioned, each translator’s reflections are rendered in either extracts or full-length writings on one or more specific translations – which may be in progress or finished products. Lastly, we are provided with either extensive or abbreviated pieces of translation. For example, the first part on “Antiquity to Modern Times” opens with an introduction followed by a subchapter on “Classical Latin and Early Christian Latin Translation” containing reflections and translations by Cicero, Horace, Philo of Alexandria, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, Evagrius, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and Boethius; a subchapter on “Old English Translation” containing texts by King Alfred and Ælfric; a subchapter on John of Trevisa, and lastly, one about William Caxton. These subchapters emerge as historical “collages” (p. vi)

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giving the reader genuine opportunity to come to grips with major concerns of a given period. In the section on the Reformation and Renaissance we meet, among others, Martin Luther, William Tyndale, Etienne Dolet, Joachim du Bellay, Sir Thomas North, John Florio, George Chapman, Philemon Holland, Sir John Denham, Abraham Cowley, women translators from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, John Dryden, Anne Dacier, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper and Alexander Fraser Tytler. In the section on the nineteenth century we read about Goethe, Schleiermacher and R. H. Horne, and we get reviews of translations from German into English by e.g. Abraham Hayward and James Clarence Mangan, including George Eliot’s review of the English translation of Kant’s Critik der reinen Vernunft. The section also includes extracts from John Stuart Blackie’s translations of classical works as well as texts about the famous Homer translations by F. W. Newman and Matthew Arnold. The last two subsections focus on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edward FitzGerald, Robert Browning, Richard Burton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. In the section “From Pound to Nabokov” the following people are on the agenda: Ezra Pound, Constance Garnett, Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Jorge Luis Borges, Roman Jakobson, Jíří Levý, Eugene Nida, Robert Lowell, Stanley Burnshaw, Laura Bohannan and Vladimir Nabokov. The last section on recent and contemporary writings include George Steiner, James S. Holmes, Itamar Even-Zohar, André Lefevere, Mary SnellHornby, Dennis Tedlock and Jerome Rothenberg, Louis and Celia Zukofsky, A. K. Ramanujan, Gayatri Spivak, Talal Asad, Eva Hoffman, Gregory Rabassa, Suzanne Jill Levine, Ted Hughes, Douglas Robinson, Lawrence Venuti, Susan Bassnett, Everett Fox, John Felstiner, W. S. Merwin, Edwin Morgan and finally – Seamus Heaney. Before this review evolves into pure name-dropping, I think this list will do as an ample sketch of the span of the book. Now I turn to my considerations and evaluation. On the whole, Weissbort and Eysteinsson’s collection is nothing less than magnificent – both in terms of its size and of its scope. It is most refreshing to read translation theories and critiques as outcomes of practical experience and hard work, and not just as airy, detached, philosophical speculations. The collages work beautifully, even though some of the editors’ introductions and presentations of translators are too brief and fragmentary. It is highly original to constantly pick up on the theme of the Babel mythos throughout the book, even though it seems to get “lost in translation” in the section on the present. Seamus Heaney is definitely a fascinating translator at the moment, but it would have been more appropriate to end with a contemporary translator working with the Babel story – to come full circle from the beginning to the end. However, another story gradually unfolds in the course of the book. And that is the story of the two traditionally opposing strategies of translation: word-forword or sense-for-sense. It is almost possible to make a long list categorising most of the translators into advocates of either one or the other. The interesting paradox is just that with the Romantic Revolution there is a return to the stiff, old ideals of word-for-word translations, but this time it is out of respect for

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“the other”, the foreign, the exotic. This respect is also reflected in the volume in general, as the editors have included, at least to me, new eye-openers of anthropological and postcolonial dimensions, such as Laura Bohannan’s 1954 article, “Shakespeare in the ´Bush”, about the cultural dilemmas of trying to explain what Hamlet is about to a tribe in Nigeria; and extracts from the American anthropologist Talal Ahad’s 1986 article on “The Concept of Translation in British Anthropology”, explicating the problematics of translating other cultures. Another eye-opener to me is the subsection on “ethnopoetics”, i.e. an experimental movement combining anthropology, ethnography, linguistics and poetry in the translation of so-called primitive oral performances, such as narratives and songs. To conclude, this volume is indeed a recommendable “sizeable world of translation” which ought to be at hand in every translation scholar’s bookcase. It is a book about translators, their work and the British cultural polysystems they have become part of, which will hopefully, to adopt the words of Weissbort and Eysteinsson, “facilitate the reader’s appreciation of the rich mosaic of the tradition of translation which is so much a part of literary and cultural history” (p. 7). Ida Klitgård, Center for Translation Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. ********** Nolan, James. 2005. Interpretation: Techniques and Exercises. Clevedon: Cromwell Press Ltd. Viii + 320 pp. ISBN 1-85359-791-0 (hardback); 1-85359790-2 (paperback). £ 24.95 (paperback); £ 64.95 (hardback). If a career of hands-on expertise nestles behind the complete log of a seasoned interpreter who has made his way through difficult moments, Interpretation: Techniques and Exercises could be written, though the treasure trove needs some polish. Nolan’s book contains 18 well-treated drill-woven chapters, each presenting in brief a source of problem in professional interpreting and then crossing into a set of exercises whose material has been cherry-picked in large part from the very texture of the UN meetings. Categorization of chapters has likely no antecedent in academic works, at least to me: Speaking, Preparation / Anticipating the speaker, Complex syntax / Compression, Word order / Clusters, General adverbial clauses, Untranslatability, Figures of speech, Argumentation, Diction / Register, Formal style, A policy address, Quotations / Allusions / Transposition, Political discourse, Economic discourse, Humor, Latinisms, Numbers, and, Note-taking. It appears to be adopted from Nolan’s every day mission log. The exercise sections establish an integral part of the overall chapters by offering additional tips and even new sub-topics. In doing so, the author even does not avoid presenting a very substantial tip or lesson within the exercises, making the learning process inspirational unlike the regular approach by many trainer books.

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Politics is actually the dominant rhetoric in the book and proves to be effective in fostering political knowledge of the trainees besides their professional awareness. Nolan’s presents a rare in-built image of the conditions of interpretation in the market, becoming a source of inspirations for the field researchers who usually have to consider the whole matter at a distance. It furthermore appears to be a success in identifying moments of truth in the profession besides providing every solution at hand, not forgetting however to share the debate with budding interpreters by making them engaged to find solutions of their own. However, it is slow to allow trainees to check their own learning. Nolan here and there provides his path-breaking suggestions to tackle tricky situations. For example, to tackle untranslatable themes he suggests writing out strings of related words and ideas to help create necessary association in mind (p. 60). Nolan has likely conjured up these precious personally devised solutions in grapple. If only they were more. The size of the chapters more reflects the expanse of literature available to the author on those topics, or rather the author’s own fields of interests, than the urgency of the problem. As an instance, a third of the entire book discusses Figures of Speech or Diction and Register, whereas at the end of the slim chapter twelve, Quotations, Allusions and Transposition, I for one still had thirst to cover more material. Nolan on some occasions apparently approaches the profession from the rather exclusive, though instructive set of qualifications required in the UN sessions and missions, thereby risking to dwarf the generality suggested by the title of the book. Chapter 1 could have been titled oratory as it harbors an expertise far more complex than speaking as a language-learning skill. Besides, it could embed chapter 10, Formal Address, though the latter itself could be lengthier. The chapter themed Complex Syntax might become further inclusive by providing some note or exercise tip on how to handle left-branching structures, notably verb-last sentences featured among others in Persian SOV word order as opposed to SVO word order of the European languages. Nevertheless, being a polyglot, Nolan has effectively set up a comparative analysis between the European languages in terms of linguistic complexities. As regards exercises, the strategies Nolan offers had probably proved effective to him, but one may ask how much they help bring about the intended skill in the trainees and not just make them conscious about what is required. The void of a separate chapter on ethical issues is badly felt, and I think Nolan was intentional not to do so, especially for his preference to view political correctness from the prism of Diction and Register (p. 127). Nonetheless, scattered tips can be found across the chapters. These include whether or not to omit impolite language (p. 68), teamwork and interaction (p. 98), and how to respond to possible corrections from the speakers (pp. 111-2), all tackled under Figures of Speech, how to correct speakers’ wrongly made statements under Argumentation (p. 118), and how to cope with controversial subject-areas (p. 161) under Diction and Register. While the urgency of time has been paid a solemn homage under Diction and

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Register (p. 137), it seems to me that Nolan has left many stones unturned in discussing meta-translation skills, including among others how to boost recalling power or long-term memory. Nolan has begun some chapters with such debates that roughly fit the drillbased and tip-oriented mode of the book. Almost no negative implication would arise if the chapter seven began from the second paragraph, not bothering an academic discussion about how figures of speech develop. This becomes even further contentious when the author takes on the controversial theme of language relativity to introduce origins of untranslatability, but quickly arrives at conclusions. In my opinion, theoretical discussions may prove unyielding for such tip-woven books. Besides, the audience, as the author himself emphasizes (p. 1), is assumed to include students who have mastered among others the fundamentals of translation, and if so, they are certain to have tackled these theoretical discussions. Finally, a new edition could revise several typesetting errors like “world” for “word” (p. 58, line 3), “by” for “be” (p. 67, line 7), and “page 72” for “page 71” (p. 82), where the author refers to Einstein’s parable. To conclude, Nolan’s book is a veritable primer for interpretation, but one still in progress. Ali Hajmohammadi, IRIB News Agency, Iran.