The Philosophy of Translation

“Searls gives neither an apology nor a theory nor a history but, rather, a ‘philosophy’ of translation … [and] Searls’s philosophy is ultimately one of freedom—to move beyond mere equivalence, to translate how a text communicates rather than simply what it says.”—Max Norman, New Yorker

“A literary translator of astonishing range… . Searls is especially riveting when he walks us through the choices he has made as a translator.”—Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Review of Books

Received honorable mention from the James Russell Lowell Prize, sponsored by the Modern Language Association

“Damion Searls is one of the most erudite and original—and provocative—thinkers on one of today’s most important cultural subjects: translation. This book is vast, generous, charming, and profound, a brilliant meditation on how we read and what it means to move in and out of languages and language.”—Jennifer Croft

“Translators are priceless, and their task is often thankless. Now more than ever, readers who have been confused by Google Translate do not understand the project of translation. The Philosophy of Translation makes clear the mission of the translator, the amazing task of offering an extant work by constructing a new work. This book is open, honest and, most of all, smart; it makes clear that the act of translation is an act of creation. Remarkable.”—Percival Everett

“From a rich and unexpected array of sources ranging from Mayan etymology to the psychology of airplane pilots, Searls weaves a compelling case for translation as a creative act of individual human perception. Like Edith Grossman’s Why Translation Matters, The Philosophy of Translation addresses the practices and politics of literary translation in a way that is both brilliant and useful.”—Esther Allen

“It’s no easy task to explain what translators do all day. Damion Searls’s lively book explains the conceptual and practical challenges in terms that will be accessible for nonspecialists and invigorating for translators and theorists.”—Emily Wilson

“Damion Searls is perhaps the only translator in the world who could write a book with the title The Philosophy of Translation and be taken seriously by theorists and practitioners of translation alike. This erudite and accessible volume takes us on a tour of the world of translation where the familiar is made unfamiliar and back again. A stellar work I will be quoting from and returning to for years to come.”—Anton Hur

“This book is phenomenal. Damion Searls is one of the greatest translators of our time because he is also one of the greatest readers. The Philosophy of Translation is the most complete, forward-thinking, handy, rich, gleefully nitty-gritty, and compelling book on translation that I have ever read. It balances academic austerity with a more pragmatic vision of what translation means in the context of a living, breathing readership—at once accessible to academics, students of translation, seasoned translators, enthusiastic lovers of translated works, and the general, curious reader.”—Spencer Ruchti, bookseller, Third Place Books

“Damion Searls is already one of the most significant translators of the age, but here he becomes a leading thinker about translation. Far from an academic précis, The Philosophy of Translation is a thrilling tour of the history of thinking about translation, one full of striking ideas for about how to think about it now.”—Thomas Meaney, editor of Granta

Damion Searls studied philosophy at Harvard and is a prominent translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch, including of books by Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Rilke, Proust, Kielland, Jelinek, Schwitters, Mann, Modiano, and Fosse. His own books include the novel Analog Days, the poetry volume The Mariner’s Mirror, and The Inkblots, a history of the Rorschach test and biography of its creator.

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