Bookish Diversions: Kafka’s Tricksy Translation

Innocent Mistake, Kafkaesque, Tricksy Bits, What Bugs Translators, Interfering Moustache, More

¶ Innocent mistake. Franz Kafka’s The Trial introduces its protagonist as an unlucky man, arrested without cause and tormented by an arbitrary, unjust legal system. “Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K.,” runs the opening line in Idris Parry’s translation, “for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.”

K.’s i…