Programming as Translation — References & Other Books
Now that my article about translation for Increment Magazine is out, I want to list here some of the books & articles I consulted while writing that piece. Some of them made it into the text, while others were interesting deviations through the labyrinth of research.
The idea to look at Programming from a Translation POV came after a chat with Dr. Rachel Souhami during the JSConfEU dinner. After she shared a brief explanation of her thesis “Exhibition Production as Processes of Translation”, I saw how there were lots of connections between programming & translation. It was time for me to learn more.
Umberto Eco — Dire Quasi la Stessa Cosa
The main source of ideas for the article comes from Eco’s book about translation, Dire Quasi la Stessa Cosa. Sadly that book doesn’t have an English translation. In English you can find Mouse or Rat? also by Eco, although it doesn’t contain all the essays from Italian.
Dire Quasi la Stessa Cosa is filled with anecdotes both from Eco’s experience as translator, and from his experiences of his novels being translated. For example Baudolino’s first chapter is almost impossible to translate, with Spanish being almost the only exception. In that chapter Baudolino narrates his adventure in first person, using a 12th century dialect from a rural area of Torino, Italy. That chapter can be translated in Spanish without losing its spirit, because in Spanish there’s the old Castilian from El Cid Campeador.
If you read Spanish, be sure to check out Helena Lozano Miralles essay where she explains her decisions while translating Baudolino: “Cuando el Traductor Empieza a Inventar: Creación Léxica en la Versión Española de Baudolino de Umberto Eco”.
Data & Reality
This a book from back in the ’70s about data modeling. I consider this book a must read for any software developer. It’s clear, and presents very interesting questions about how we should handle data under the ever relevant idea of “the map is not the territory”.
The library/books/volume section of my article is based on examples form this book.
Os Keyes — The Misgendering Machines: Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition
This is probably one of the best papers I’ve ever read. Very thorough on the topic of AGR and its ethical implications. Whether you are into AI/ML or not, you should to read this paper.
Emily Wilson — The Odyssey
Emily Wilson new translation of the Odyssey comes with a great introduction where she explains her decisions while bringing the text back to life in a new rendition. She has written a few Twitter threads with great insights about translation. Her thread about the Sirens convinced me to buy the book as soon as it was available.
It’s really interesting how she explains why the new medium and context where her Odyssey appears influenced her translation of the many epithets from the original text. We live in a society with high literacy, where written text is almost second nature for us, so this asks for a rendition of the text that have very different goals from Homer’s original poem.
Judith Buttler — Introduction to Derrida’s Of Grammatology
From Buttler’s introduction to Derrida’s text I’ve got the idea of translation as a ruin. Also this introduction is full of gems on its own. See for example:
[…] a translation retroactively alters the language in which the original was written as it breaks into, and augments, the language into which the original arrives […] the arrival is ongoing, uneven, and incomplete.
We can see this happening in how software augments and changes reality, Google Maps being perhaps one of the most obvious examples, with its maps altering the reality we expect out there.
At the same time, I think this happens when we translate code from one programming language into another. Each translation or porting of code defines how certain patterns say in Haskell, must be written in Java, and vice-versa.
Jean Baudrillard — Simulacra and Simulations
The famous essay from the French author introduced me and idea that goes beyond “the map is the territory” when he says:
The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it […] it is the map that engenders the territory.
This was discussed in most of the article, where I try to show with examples how our abstractions affect and determine reality.
And that’s it. I hope you enjoy these books and articles as much as I did while I was writing this piece for Increment. I’m sure they will help you bring a new point of view into how you develop software.
