A profile on Arthur Goldhammer, who has translated over 100 books from French to English.
As a translator, Goldhammer tries to find a pragmatic middle-ground between literalism and freestyle. The goal is to be faithful to the contents of a book but also find a style for it that works in English. For Goldhammer, Derrida’s famous adage “there is nothing outside the text” is of little use to a translator. To translate both non-fiction and novels, Goldhammer contends, “You need a familiarity with French culture. You need to do work that goes well beyond and outside the text to in order to translate inside the text.
