What do bridges have in common with translations?
What do bridges have in common with translations? Every human being has probably read a translation already. Be it the favourite novel which was originally written in English and then translated into the reader’s mother tongue, a translated article in a specialist magazine or simply the menu in a restaurant down the street. Ideally, the reader does not even notice that the text is a translation. But how can you achieve that? In German, there is the same verb for (to) ferry (= to cross a river by a ferry or convey from one place to another) and (to) translate (= to convey a message from one language to another). It is the same word in German ( übersetzen ) and obviously it also has a common origin: the conception of transferring something. "Words travel worlds. Translators do the driving." This wonderful and well-known quote by translator Anna Rusconi uses a similar conception and perfectly describes what translation is all about. People mostly use words to communicate ...