The Living and the Dead Word

Nora Gal - an outstanding translator and literary critic, transmitted in Russian the voices of Ray Bradbury, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Theodore Dreiser, and many other authors. Her works have become a model of how translation can be not imitation, but co-creation.
"The Living and the Dead Word" is a classic work on the culture of speech and the expressiveness of language. Through examples from literary texts and translations, Nora Gal demonstrates how the living word is born, and how clichés, negligence, and thoughtless bureaucratese kill meaning. This is a book about a careful, reverent approach to language and responsibility towards the reader.