Intercom

When featured at all, translators and interpreters tend to be employed in fictional works not so much for what they do or for any unique personality traits they may have as for what their occupation tends stereotypically to represent: an obsession with words, a frustration at being considered second-best to an idealized original, and a rarely-resisted temptation to take over the latter and finally enjoy the spotlight. Consequently, they often turn out to be flat characters, but contemporary literature is increasingly introducing more complex versions of these language professionals. Three novels by Diego Marani, New Finnish Grammar (2011), The Last of the Vostyachs (2012) and The Interpreter (2015), portray interpreters, translators, and linguists unleashing their fixations in curiously destructive manners. A close reading of these works examines how Marani engages with these clichés and what his take on them reveals in terms of faith or distrust in Language as a whole.