David Bellos

David Bellos

Director, Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication, Princeton University

David Bellos is Director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University, where he is also a professor of French and comparative literature. He has won many awards for his translations of Georges Perec, Ismail Kadare, and others, including the Man Booker International Translator’s Award. He also received the Prix Goncourt for George Perec: A Life in Words.

You have to have a very quick mind and you have to have this peculiar ability to speak whilst you’re listening. 
In this guest post, David Bellos, director of Princeton's Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication, demolishes the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. New Yorkers have more words for coffee than Eskimos do for snow, he says.