Mistranslations
I once ordered breakfast in Budapest and was brought a cake.
Budapest 2011
Desk Notes explores writing, travel, and literature—and is read in more than one hundred countries every week.
I once ordered breakfast in Budapest and was brought a cake. As with nearly every major city, Budapest considers itself the coffee capital and has a surplus of cafés, most with plenty of options for salty or sweet breakfasts, so all was not lost, and I eventually got my meal. The rest of that morning is a blur, but the miscommunication lingers as a memory, one that came back to me earlier today while I was reviewing a curious little paragraph. I noticed a potential connection between translation—or, more accurately, mistranslation—and creation. Those attempting to speak and those attempting to create might recognize the affinity.
When I try to speak a language that I don’t fully know, there’s an intriguing three-step dance: what I want to say, what I do say, what the person hears. From when the music starts to when the dance is performed is quite a long distance. There’s plenty of space between my wants and what’s heard for a simple, yet consequential, trip.
There’s another three-step dance when I pick up my pen: what I envision, what I create, what the reader interprets. Few writers even survive the journey from vision to creation: the page reveals the messy, bewildering words that seemed so pristine when they were mere ideas. Once the reader finally shows up in the final step—with their own disposition, complications, errors, distractions—are there even any remnants of the original vision?
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A novel displays a fraction of what a writer originally intended. By the time the page is ready for your eyes, that early ambition has been transformed. If you squint, you can see the writer in the distance. Somewhere near the horizon, still within view, but just beyond what’s comfortable. The best writers strain and push and toil but they can’t get any closer.
In a manner similar to good speakers, however, good writers do give the illusion of closing the gap—the distance between writer and reader appears to shrink. The sound of a writer’s voice, the tones, cadences, all of it emerges from the sentences on the page. This is what makes a good novel feel like a personal letter. Yet the gap hasn’t disappeared, it’s only diminished, as the gap will always persist—the one between intention and action, the one between experience and interpretation. It exists in every conversation, regardless of how inconsequential or grand the interaction. What’s most intriguing is that art—at its best—closes the gap better than anything else.
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