Found in Translation

INTRODUCTION
Translation. It’s everywhere you look, but seldom seen. This book will help
you find it. Found in Translation shines a spotlight into the nooks and crannies
of everyday life to reveal that translation is right there, hidden just beneath the
surface. Worth an estimated $33 billion, translation is the biggest industry that
you never knew existed.
Why should you care? Because translation affects every aspect of your life
—and we’re not just talking about the obvious things, like world politics and
global business. Translation affects you personally, too. The books you read.
The movies you watch. The food you eat. Your favorite sports team. The
opinions you hold dear. The religion you practice. Even your looks and, yes,
your love life. Right this very minute, translation is saving lives, perhaps even
yours.
Translation affects everything from holy books to hurricane warnings,
poetry to Pap smears. It’s needed by both the masses and the millionaires.
Translation converts the words of dictators and diplomats, princes and pop
stars, bus drivers and baseball players. Translation fuels the global economy,
prevents wars, and stops the outbreak of disease. From tummy tucks to terrorist
threats, it’s everywhere.
This book will help you see how the products you use, the freedoms you
enjoy, and the pleasures in which you partake are made possible by translation.
You’ll also get a close-up look at a unique species of human beings who
dedicate their lives to searching for the best ways to say things in other
languages. As you’ll see throughout this book, there are actually two separate
groups of these folks—the ones who deal with written words (translators) and
those who deal with the spoken kind (interpreters). You’re affected by both.
Why are we qualified to help you find translation? First let us appeal to your
brain, then to your heart. We have plenty of street cred when it comes to the
fields of translation and interpreting. One of us (Jost) is a certified translator
for German. The other (Nataly) is a certified court interpreter for Spanish. One
of us (Jost) wrote a doctoral dissertation on translation in history. The other
(Nataly) was a Fulbright scholar in sociolinguistics. We have forty years of

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combined translation experience between us, and we are regularly tapped to
speak on the topic around the world. That’s the boring part, but it gives you a
rough synopsis of our credentials.
Now here’s the fun part. To help you learn about translation and how it
affects you, we hunted for the most beautiful, compelling, and entertaining
stories we could find. In laid-back Mountain View, California, we interviewed
the modern-day Wizard of Oz for the translation world—the brain behind
Google Translate. In the Vegas heat, we visited the luxurious Bellagio, and
found ourselves drawn not to the casinos or fountains, but to a Turkish staff
member with an account of a magnificent translation blunder. On a brisk day at
the United Nations in New York, we met a man whose Arabic misinterpretation
caused the entire General Assembly to roar with applause. And in a quiet
suburb of Chicago, on the eve of winter, we sat down for Kaffee and Stollen in
the home of a ninety-one-year-old gentleman who interpreted for Nazi war
criminals at the Nuremberg trials.
That’s just the beginning. We talked with designers of bilingual greeting
cards at Hallmark, masterminds behind multicultural marketing at Nestlé, and
the person who makes sure that millions of non-English-speaking customers
for United Airlines can book their flights on the web. We interviewed
interpreters who work for clients as diverse as a professional basketball
player, an Oscar-winning actress, and the president of the United States
(several of them, actually). We even tracked down Dr. Seuss’s translator on a
hunch that converting the lines “green eggs and ham” and “Sam I am” into
another language would surely be enlightening.
Our quest to find translation was not confined within the borders of the
United States. Far from it. We interviewed an Inuit in the Arctic, a M ori in New
Zealand, and an Arabic translator in Sudan. We saw how translation fueled by
mobile technology rescued victims of the earthquake in Haiti, and how it gives
power to people involved in revolutions in the Middle East. We chronicled
translation on a flight to Iceland, among poets in central London, and on the
floor of the European Parliament. We spoke with people who translate The
Simpsons in Finland, Harlequin romance novels in the Netherlands, and soccer
stats in Brazil. We uncovered beautiful anecdotes and timeless truths about
religious translation—in Israel and Lebanon alike. Our quest for awe-inspiring
translation anecdotes even led us to outer space (think NASA, not alien life
forms).
We ventured far beyond just the languages that you might have studied in
high school. We located stories about the translation of Shuar, Romani, and
Inuktitut. We learned how translation helped bring one language back from the

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dead (Wampanoag) and helps another keep on ticking (Irish Gaelic). Our
sleuthing for the best stories took us backstage at Cirque du Soleil, behind the
scenes at Facebook and Twitter, and onto the gold medal platform at the
Olympic Games. We dove many centuries into the past to take a look at how
translation has shaped history, and we also got a glimpse into the future.
So now, join us as we recount the very best tales of translation, collected
after scouring our sources and traveling far and wide. The stories in this book
are, of course, only the beginning. After all, this fascinating yet often unseen
universe of translation is all around you. This journey will reveal how
translation shapes your world. And it will transform your own perspective in
the process.
Let the search begin!

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