How does one prepare to do something like this? There aren’t any conservatories for it, or even majors. There are some Master’s programs in literary translation, but most translation programs focus on technical translation, that is, for the translation of documents, scholarly journals, instructions, and other foreign-language writing where style is of little concern. There are translation seminars and there are translator-professors who act as mentors, but there is little of the sort of institutionalism that characterizes most arts today, and most translators have never studied translation.
Well, I’m going to argue that there is no better way to prepare to become a literary translator than to go to law school and practice law, something I have done myself but not something done by any translator I have spoken with or read about, at least in this century. I hope this will convince you of the likely truth of my contention.
Why law? One reason is that being a lawyer requires what being a writer or critic usually doesn’t: appreciating the value of words not just as little wads of meaning or feeling, but as missiles that can have huge ramifications if you can’t tell the difference between short-range and long-range, between nuclear and chemical warheads. For lawyers, multimillion-dollar deals can succeed or fail (for one side or the other) based on the level of ambiguity or precision of a certain word or phrase, in a certain context, for a certain purpose. Every word a lawyer uses is a commitment, with a goal, an interest, and a risk that is—or at least should be— understood. Therefore, the lawyer is concerned with the finest distinctions between words, not only in meaning but also in tone and level of clarity.
Translation hardly involves multimillions of dollars or people’s lives, but it too involves commitment down at the nitty-gritty level and in terms of someone else’s goals and interests. Like a lawyer, the translator does not represent himself, as do the writer and the critic; the translator is representing his client, the original writer. He has responsibilities, he is committed to fulfilling them, and if he’s good he knows how and why he’s fallen short, where he’s had to compromise to get a deal through.
Central to the study and practice of law is the distinction
between process and substance, a distinction akin to that in
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