The translator vs the interpreter

John le Carre, writing in his novel The Mission Song, makes this useful distinction between something ordinary in the business of dealing with words and something quite extraordinary, even magical:

Never mistake, please, your mere translator for your top interpreter. An interpreter is a translator, true, but not the other way around. A translator can be anyone with half a language skill and a dictionary and a desk to sit at while he burns the midnight oil: pensioned-off Polish cavalry officers, underpaid overseas students, minicab drivers, part-time waiters and supply teachers, and anyone else who is prepared to sell his soul for seventy quid a thousand. He has nothing in common with the simultaneous interpreter sweating it out through six hours of complex negotiations. Your top interpreter has to think as fast as a numbers boy in a coloured jacket buying financial futures. Better sometimes if he doesn't think at all, but orders the spinning cogs on b0th sides of his head to mesh together, then sits back and waits to see what pours out of his mouth.

For The Guardian's review of The Mission Song, click here.

For The New York Times' review, go here.

For le Carre's official website, visit this.