The Linguist

Chartered Institute of Linguists WINTER 2025 The Linguist 27 REVIEWS help express themselves across cultures and epochs, in a work that combines academic expertise with broader scholarly insights and her own personal reflections. The author asserts that human communication involves much more than spoken language, as has been traditionally emphasised. She encourages readers to consider a comprehensive communicative framework that includes vocalisation, visual symbols, gestures and artistic media. The 'strange tools' to which she refers – where the pen includes any implement for producing graphic representations and the lyre any type of music – are presented not simply as technological developments but as extensions of human cognition and interaction, influenced by evolutionary, creative and cultural factors. Finnegan proposes that verbal, gestural and instrumental forms of communication probably evolved concurrently rather than in a linear sequence. To illustrate this idea, she examines oral traditions characterised by the integration of voice and gesture, drawing on her own anthropological experience of African storytelling techniques. Throughout the book, the importance of both vocal and instrumental music is emphasised as a form of personal and cultural expression, evolving alongside – or even preceding – linguistic communication. Placing humanity within an overall evolutionary framework (she is a keen Darwinian), she opposes the traditional dichotomy between human and animal communication, favouring a continuum across species and time. While the sources and reference materials may mostly be regarded as conventional, there are a few surprises. Finnegan's choice of the controversial 19th-century philologist Friedrich Max Müller as a paradigm for illustrating the complex matter of language origin is eccentric, to say the least. Elsewhere, in a chapter on intercommunication, her orthodox narrative involving various animal and human behaviours switches startlingly to the sphere of paranormal communication with spirits and the dead. This is not what we expect to find in a supposedly scientific work, although it may also be acknowledged that such deviations endow this engaging and informative book with a distinctly personal touch. Ross Smith MCIL CL Susan Pickford's Professional Translators in Nineteenth-Century France explores the historical practices and professional identities of translators in the long 19th century (1789- 1914). The author brings the translators to life by contextualising their professional and personal lives within the political, sociocultural, legal and economic developments in France – and, by extension, in Europe – that led to the development of the professional translation industry in France. The advent of steam and electricity, the expanding trans-European economy and the internationalisation of economic exchanges created a growing demand for translation services. The post-Revolution 'Dugas enterprise' that undertook to translate revolutionary decrees into the local languages in 30 départements remained largely unpaid due to a lack of bureaucratic infrastructure, but was highly professional. It produced a new category of public employee, the vérificateur, who assessed translation quality. Cultural differences are also noted, with English to French translators ranking higher than French to English, as they were scarcer. Italian to French translators were reluctant to be tied to deadlines, while Spanish to French translators were rare and thus prized. In the absence of formal qualifications, there was a Professional Translators in Nineteenth- Century France Susan Pickford Routledge 2024, 236 pp; ISBN 9781003173090 eBook, £42.99 hierarchy of social and linguistic capital at play, with translators emphasising their credentials. Pickford explores the development of a legal framework for literary translation, mostly centred on translators' right to claim authorship and thus droit d'auteur ('intellectual property rights'). Fascinating insights into the economic lives of women translators, including Louise Swanton-Belloc (1796-1881) and Emma Allouard (1836-1918), are also provided. Swanton-Belloc, who was grandmother to the poet Hilaire Belloc, showed a "hard-nosed business attitude," learning shorthand and negotiating her income "based on her labour time and reputation". Both women came from privileged families whose wealth was decimated by the Revolution and their earnings from translation must have been very welcome. The records show that their income dipped when their children were young – a pattern that remains to this day – and the author compares it to the difficulties encountered by female translators during the Covid pandemic. This beautifully researched and extensively referenced book underlines the Paris-centric nature of the French publishing industry. While the focus is on literary translation, with other fields of translation remaining tangential, the fascinating accounts of the lives of individual translators, collectives and agencies, and the revelations about rates, working conditions and quality control, will surely resonate with today's professional translators. Dr Amanda Haste MCIL CL N 1 I C 2 O S 3 I A 4 C 5 Y C 6 L E 7 U E N U O E U L 8 A L L A N S R 9 O S E S L L R T S T K S 10 E O U L E 11 R U D I T E U N N R S 12 C A 13 M P I M 14 A 15 N A N A T P V 16 P E 17 S P A N 18 O L P 19 A R 20 I S 21 L É A A R A A L 22 A T I N A 23 B I D J A N A I C M S A A R 24 I T Z Y S 25 V E N S K A Crossword solution Puzzle page 34

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