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
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10 The Linguist Vol/57 No/1 2018 www.ciol.org.uk FEATURES the crucial work of the interpreter and translator to cultural and political internationalism – the importance of which is often unsung. At the Zurich International in 1893, Eleanor was delegate as well as translator and continued to serve at the internationals of the 1890s. She worked also at other international trade union conferences. Acting as secretary by day, she spent the nights writing full-length political and economic analyses for the international press, which she typed up and submitted in both English and German. Eleanor interpreted, translated and kept verbatim reports, copied from her notes with her 'machine'. Building beauty It is important to remember how vital translation work was to the effectiveness of internationally supported strike campaigns. Eleanor managed several major worldwide strike funds, dealing with contributions from across the globe, including the USA (at the time, most immigrant-led socialist trade unions in the US conducted their business in German). Her legacy as a literary translator forms part of an integrated whole with her political work. She was a child of German Romanticism and European philosophy, and a radical who believed socialism was about building beauty. Within 12 months between the summers of 1885 and 1886 she started and finished the first English translation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and revised a new edition of her former lover Lissagaray's History of the Commune, in which she had been so instrumental. Like most translators, Eleanor was critical of her own work, but it is still used for new editions and some scholars argue that it stands as one of the best. Nabokov fulminated about Eleanor's version, as he did about all others, but it was hers he chose as a set text when teaching the novel. Her challenge was to translate to a tight deadline a writer who spent whole days, sometimes weeks, seeking a single right word, and whose masterpiece is structured through ironic cliché, banality and romantic convention. Impressively, she resolved the question of how to translate le style indirect libre – free indirect speech – in a way that made this radical new way of writing aesthetically meaningful to English readers. Eleanor translated many significant new literary works, such as her friend Amy Levy's novel Reuben Sachs about Anglo-Jewry, and the short stories of Alexander Kielland, later acknowledged as one of the Norwegian greats. Bernstein was correct about Eleanor's labour ethic. "Laziness is the root of all evil" was a favourite catchphrase. Certainly her ability to burn the candle at both ends is reflected in her prodigious output, of which this is only a snapshot. This aspect of her work provides a reminder of the vital importance of translation and multilingualism to political internationalism in times so threatened by cultural parochialism and the divide-and- rule nationalism it begets. LIFE'S WORK Eleanor (centre) with her sisters Jenny and Laura, father Karl and Friedrich Engels; and (above) the cover of Eleanor Marx: A life by Rachel Holmes (2014, Bloomsbury) For writers' biographies for all feature articles, see page 34.