The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/933479
FEATURES "She was ceaselessly busy, from morning to evening, generally interpreting in three languages" thelinguist.uberflip.com FEBRUARY/MARCH The Linguist 9 Commune. To this day, the book remains the primary historical source of Communard history. Marx became a socialist activist, feminist, trade-unionist and leading internationalist of her age. She was equally absorbed in modern drama and teaching the emerging discipline of Shakespeare studies. Her language skills were key to her public, professional and personal lives. Interpreter and translator for the first International Workers Congress, held in London in November 1888 and organised by the TUC (Trades Union Congress) Parliamentary Committee, her fluent German and French, combined with a deep knowledge of labour and socialist issues, made her the linchpin communicator between European delegates. In the break after every congress speech, delegates gathered around the interpreter speaking their language – Eleanor attracted the largest crowd. Literary translation The same year, she completed the first translation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, or as she translated idiomatically En Folkefiende ('An Enemy of Society'). Her friend Henry Havelock Ellis commissioned this for the first English edition of Ibsen's works of which he was editor, offering the handsome fee of £5. Tussy was known for her championing of the radical Norwegian dramatist. For her 31st birthday, she arranged a reading of A Doll's House – or 'Nora', as the play was then called – in her living room in Great Russell Street. Tussy's friend George Bernard Shaw, who had never heard of the play and knew nothing of Ibsen, read the part of Krogstadt at her request. Ibsen became Shaw's most formative theatrical influence. Fifty years later, Shaw confirmed that Tussy had introduced him to Ibsen's work through her theatrical soiree – "the first performance of A Doll's House in England". Eleanor became the go-to translator for Ibsen in Britain, and the publisher Thomas Fisher Unwin commissioned her to translate the first English version of The Lady from the Sea. Superhuman effort Her literary translation ran alongside her political work. In 1889, Eleanor was in Paris for the landmark International Socialist Workers' Congress – "the Marxist Congress". Once again, she interpreted and translated the proceedings, including historical resolutions on the unity of the movement, the international eight-hour working day, disarmament, pay and conditions for child and women workers, and the establishment of an annual international labour demonstration for 1 May. Eleanor was a political leader in the campaigns for the eight-hour day, rights of women and children, and the call for May Day, so she both drafted and translated the resolutions. Eduard Bernstein described "the superhuman effort" she put into the task that made the gathering of many different language speakers possible. "She was ceaselessly busy, from morning to evening, generally interpreting in three languages. She gave herself no respite, missed no session… doing this thankless, gruelling work: in the truest sense of the word the 'proletarian' of the Congress." Bernstein's acknowledgement speaks across the centuries to