Earlier this week, the scholar George Steiner died. Along with Umberto Eco, he was among the last of the great 20th century polymaths whose indomitable intellect and gimlet eye was drawn to translation as art, craft and science.
Steiner’s text on translation, After Babel (1973) has gone through numerous reprints and three separate editions, and casts a long shadow over the still nascent discipline of Translation Studies. It long predates many other influential texts in the arena, including Eco’s belated works, Experiences in Translation (2000) and Mouse or Rat? (2003).