Prologue 3
1. What Is a Translation? 7
2. Is Translation Avoidable? 11
3. Why Do We Call It "Translation"? 24
4. Things People Say About Translation 37
5. Fictions of the Foreign: The Paradox of "Foreign-Soundingness" 44
6. Native Command: Is Your Language Really Yours? 60
7. Meaning Is No Simple Thing 69
8. Words Are Even Worse 82
9. Understanding Dictionaries 94
10. The Myth of Literal Translation 102
11. The Issue of Trust: The Long Shadow of Oral Translation 117
12. Custom Cuts: Making Forms Fit 131
13. What Can't Be Said Can't Be Translated: The Axiom of Effability 146
14. How Many Words Do We Have for Coffee? 157
15. Bibles and Bananas: The Vertical Axis of Translation Relations 167
16. Translation Impacts 182
17. The Third Code: Translation as a Dialect 190
18. No Language Is an Island: The Awkward Issue of L3 196
19. Global Flows: Center and Periphery in the Translation of Books 202
20. A Question of Human Rights: Translation and the Spread of International Law 217
21. Ceci n'est pas une traduction: Language Parity in the European Union 229
22. Translating News 241
23. The Adventure of Automated Language-Translation Machines 247
24. A Fish in Your Ear: The Short History of Simultaneous Interpreting 259
25. Match Me If You Can: Translating Humor 273
26. Style and Translation 281
27. Translating Literary Texts 291
28. What Translators Do 300
29. Beating the Bounds: What Translation Is Not 310
30. Under Fire: Sniping at Translation 315
31. Sameness, Likeness, and Match: Truths About Translation 319
32. Avatar. A Parable of Translation 323
Afterbabble: In Lieu of an Epilogue 325
Notes 339
Caveats and Thanks 355
Index 357