“When the army found out that I could speak French, they sent me for training in Vietnamese,” Arthur Goldhammer explains. Thus began his foray into translation, which would turn into a career of three decades. With a bachelor’s degree and PhD in Mathematics from MIT, Goldhammer took a less traditional route to translation. That does not seem to have been a problem, however: over the course of his career, Goldhammer has translated over 135 French works, more than any other single French to English translator.

If it had not been for the draft notice Goldhammer received in 1968, it is possible his career would have taken an entirely different path. Goldhammer left for Vietnam intending to return to MIT and pursue a career as a mathematician, but as he says, “unbeknownst to me my passions had changed” during his time as an interpreter and translator in the army. In Vietnam, Goldhammer found that because the Vietnamese officers with whom he was working had been trained under the French colonial system, it was easier for them to communicate using their second language, French. “I really used my French in that capacity,” he explains. Having spent that time abroad, Goldhammer discovered he wanted to see the world. He recalled his first trip to Paris and wanted to go back. But despite his restlessness toward the end of the War, Goldhammer’s pragmatism took over: “I figured that my best shot would be to finish graduate school so I’d have something to fall back on,” if Paris did not work out.

Goldhammer’s translations run the gamut—he has translated both fiction and non-fiction, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Emile Zola and Albert Camus. Most recently, he translated the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and The Economics of Inequality (2015). Goldhammer’s translation of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published by the Harvard University Press, was the first book published by a university press to top the New York Times non-fiction bestsellers list, selling over 1.5 million copies in its first year.

Goldhammer came upon his first translation project, a book by the French sociologist Michel Crozier, somewhat by chance. Living in Paris after graduate school, Goldhammer decided to look for work and turned to translation because, as he recalls, it “was an obvious thing to do.” A friend connected him to Crozier, who was looking for a translator in Paris. Goldhammer had no professional translation experience apart from what he had done in the army. “At the beginning, I did a lot of ancillary reading of works connected with the book that I was translating because I was really learning the subject as I was going along,” he says, the truth of this is obvious from the walls lined with overflowing bookshelves in his living room. “In non-fiction, you’re usually translating for a community of scholars so I wanted to know how similar books had been [done] before, what the established jargon, technical vocabulary in the particular field was.” Despite needing to be abreast of the appropriate vocabularies, he explains that in the end, the shape of the final product is up to the translator: “You have a great deal of liberty.”

Goldhammer translates professionally from French, using English as the target language. He is more comfortable translating into English because he has a stronger grasp on grammar and stylistic conventions: “When I translate into French, I don’t have that same strong feeling that I’ve got it right.” He mentions a theory of translation based on a study that correlates cognitive skills with success translating in both directions. The study found that success translating into the foreign language was correlated with mathematical skill while success translating from the foreign language was tied to musical skill. Given his math background, Goldhammer is an anomaly to this study as his math background is much stronger than his musical ability, but he has had more success and comfort translating from French into English. Goldhammer says, “I thought, ‘this is interesting because mathematical ability has to do with logic, deduction and structure and the ability to have intuitions about structures’—I have that ability, but I don’t have the same confidence translating into French.”

Goldhammer retired in September 2015, after translating Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality. Reflecting on his career of 30 years, Goldhammer says, “translation allowed me to range widely. I’ve learned a lot of things about a lot of different fields that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to become as deeply involved in as I have. I would have been very impatient about having to stick to one thing.” Instead, he explains, “I feel I have a depth of connection with another society that would have been hard to acquire in any other way. So for me, that’s a very privileged position.” He points out that despite only living in France for a short time following graduate school, he travels there often and feels that he’s “really a part of the culture.” It’s almost, he says, like being a French citizen.

Looking ahead, Goldhammer plans to pursue his own writing. “Being able to write well in your native language is just as important as being able to understand the foreign language,” he notes. Goldhammer writes prolifically on his blog, “French Politics” and has a regular column in The American Prospect covering European politics. He describes his newest book project as a comparison of French and American democracy growing out of his translations of Tocqueville. Remembering his translations of Tocqueville and others on democracy, Goldhammer smiles: “part of the challenge was to differentiate styles so that they didn’t all sound like Goldhammer.” Now as he focuses on his own writing, it is going to be all Goldhammer all the time.

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Arthur Goldhammer: I was an undergraduate at MIT majoring first in physics and then in math. I started graduate school at MIT in 1967 and at the end of that first year of graduate school, so the summer of 1968, I went to Europe for the first time. When I got to Paris, I fell in love with the city and it was all over. French was the language that I had studied starting from the 8^th grade, but since I was totally involved in science I never thought whatsoever about ever winding up in France.

When I got home, I found a draft notice waiting for me. I went in November of ’68. When the army found out that I could speak French, they sent me for training in Vietnamese. So after going through several months of training, basic training and intelligence school, I was sent to Vietnam as a Vietnamese interpreter. When I got to the country and was assigned to an intelligence unit, I found out that the Vietnamese people that I’d be working with had mostly been trained under the French colonial system so they spoke French. My French was better than my Vietnamese. I really used my French in that capacity.

When I came back, I intended to continue with mathematics, but unbeknownst to me my passions had changed. I had always wanted to write fiction as well as to do math, but in those days, the government was giving out lots of scholarships for people who were talented in math and science because Sputnik had been sent up and we were behind the Russians, or so they thought… I figured I’d do math and write fiction on the side.

So I went to Paris. When my money started to run out I thought what can I do to make money while I am living here—translation was an obvious thing. I had an American friend who had taken a job with Michel Crozier, the French sociologist, who had just finished a book and was looking for a translator. Since he spoke English quite well, he wanted to supervise the translation and was looking for somebody in Paris. I was there, so he agreed, even though I had no experience, to take me. He didn’t really supervise the translation. When I was all finished we had lunch and he kind of riffled through the pages and sent it off to the University of Chicago Press.

That was a really fortuitous connection because Chicago, at that point, was very interested in translations. It was doing more translations than any other press in the country and they had signed up a bunch of works in French history by annales historians like Jacques Le Goff, Georges Duby. They liked what I had done with Crozier and asked if I’d like to try those.

They started me on this series of French history works. It was a great opportunity for me because annales history was in vogue and widely read. They had enough to keep me busy steadily for several years and if you’re a freelancer, that’s always the difficult part of the job because there are sometimes lapses in between commissions, and then, how do you survive during that time. So I had pretty steady work, which was very lucky for somebody who didn’t have very much experience at that point. That job got me connected with the Harvard University Press. They had this series, A History of Private Life, which was a five-volume work by different authors. That was great because it meant that I would have work for 3-4 years. I did a number of multivolume works after that and having worked for both Chicago and Harvard, my reputation was well established, so I got lots of other commissions and that pretty much kept me busy for 30 years. It was incredible.

Sammy Marrus: Did you find that once you had connections at Harvard and Chicago you were able to have more say over what you translated?

AG: Getting a book approved for a university press is a complicated process because there’s an acquiring editor who then sends the work out to a board of reviewers; it’s a long time consuming process. Occasionally I did suggest a work, but then you’d have to wait a long time for it to happen and I found it wasn’t worth my while. I found the books that I was getting were interesting enough so I stopped trying to influence the process.

SM: Would you approach a book in exactly the same way each time or would it depend on the topic?

AG: It depends very much on the topic. At the beginning, I did a lot of ancillary reading because I was really learning the subject as I was going along. In non-fiction translating, you’re usually translating for a community of scholars, so I wanted to know how similar books had been translated before, what the established jargon was, so I’d read related books. I still do that to some extent. As I got more experienced, there was less necessity.

SM: How do you see the role of the translator? Do you have liberty to change the text and make it make more sense in an English context?

AG: Yes, you have a great deal of liberty. I’ve often availed myself of that liberty. In the case of Piketty, it was less necessary because he writes in a straightforward style. That book sold more books than any other book I’ve translated. It was not the most challenging book to translate by any means because the language was straightforward and inflected by English economists. Piketty himself had taught at MIT and written in English, so the rhythms of his style were more congenial to English than some other books.

With works in French history, there’s often an elaborate rhetorical style that doesn’t go very easily into English, so you have to do more work shaping the sentences to fit into English. What I often found was that the first one or two chapters of a book would go more slowly than the remainder because you have to work into each author’s style; there’s a certain resistance at the beginning.

The collective works posed a particular challenge—you’d have 30 or 40 different authors writing about similar themes. Part of the challenge was to differentiate styles so that they didn’t all sound like Goldhammer. Preserving the voice and what I like to think of as the music of the prose is very. It’s not just about understanding the ideas; there are other elements to prose. I always thought of myself as a writer first. Being able to write well in your native language is just as important as being able to understand the foreign language.

My role is to serve as a bridge between the author and the community. With a work of history or economics or sociology, you know that you’re writing for a group of scholars, so they’re educated people who understand the kinds of ideas that are being expressed in the book. Your role is to transmit the writers’ thoughts as forcefully as you can, in a matter that reflects, in your judgment, the manner in which the author would have if he were a native English speaker.

SM; Does it change the ease or your approach if you’re able to meet the author and understand his or her positionality?

AG: I have to say, no. In the early days, it was rare for French historians who were kind of hexagonal in their orientation, to speak English well. Now, with the younger generation, most educated French people do speak English well. I have been able to communicate with them more freely about the work. So with Piketty, for example, I worked very closely.

For me, the process of writing is a very silent process. It’s communing with the text and seeing how it sounds in your inner ear. You fall back instinctively on how it sounds, you tinker with the sentence until it clicks into place. When I translate in the other direction, into French, I don’t have that same strong feeling that I’ve got it right. I’m much more timid as a writer because I know that certain things are correct. There are ways in which I would be more daring in English that I am not in French because I’m not sure that it’s correct.

There’s a book on the theory of translation that cited a study in which they correlated skills with success in translation in both directions. They found that success in translating into your own language corresponded to musical talent, but translating into the other language, particularly Latin, correlated with mathematical ability. I thought, this is interesting because mathematical ability has to do with logic, deduction and structure and the ability to have intuitions about structures—I have that ability, but I don’t have the same confidence translating into French.