Lost in Translation | Karen Kao
When I first moved to the Netherlands, I worked as a translator. A catalogue for the Rijksmuseum, a Ph.D. dissertation on patients’ rights, an environmental law journal. I translated because it was a way for me to learn Dutch, word by word. It felt like an algebra exercise. Each sentence was an equation. All I had to do was work out the variables. hidden works In my second job as a lawyer , I continued to translate though the work got a lot harder. I explained to foreign clients how Dutch law worked, using words borrowed from another legal system. That’s a tricky thing to do. Legal terms come with deep roots, a judicial pedigree and legislative baggage. It’s not enough to know the words in order to translate. Now that I’m on my third career as a writer , I am in awe of translators. I love to read about peoples, places and times that are not my own. Nine times out of ten, you’re talking about a work in translation. It could be Spanish or Japanese or Danish. And since...