How I Became a Translator

The title is misleading of course. It has the makings of a false narrative: how I did this; how I did that… as though translation were not something we are engaged in, without option and at all times, from the very start of life.

Early childhood is the acute phase of translation, and of being translated. Those moments in which every gaze, every enraged instinct on the part of the infant, meets with either incomprehension or else with a tentative, and then a more assured translation. In turn, the child who fails to translate in accordance with imposed interpretative norms will be labelled with some deficiency or syndrome that reflects inadequate life skills.

By the time we come to consider a form of translation as overt as the transference of semantic load from one language to another, we have already acquired a specific set of linguistic skills, and since a majority of children in the world grow up exposed to more than one language, decoding is a skill which has many possible applications.

Like others, I began translating in a very amateur sort of way on family holidays when confronted with signs and notices in campsites and hotels. Most particularly I was diverted by the menus in restaurants. By the time I was in my early twenties, and had abandoned Thatcher’s Britain to live in Greece, I spent many frivolous hours decoding the English on restaurant menus. Among the culinary delights I encountered were:

Giant Beams
The Baked Thing
Greek with cheese
Bowel stuffed with spleen
Bait smooth hound
Mixed ...