A book no well-stocked bookshelf, cistern-top or handbag should be without - The Meaning of Tingo

You'll never be lost for words again. Truly enlightening! - The Wonder of Whiffling

Very funny

[A] witty, erudite exploration...[Bellos] delights in [translation's] chequered past and its contemporary ubiquity...He would like us to do more of it. With the encouragement of this book, we might even begin to enjoy it

Is That A Fish In Your Ear? is spiced with good and provocative things. At once erudite and unpretentious...[it is a] scintillating bouillabaisse

Is That A Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos (father of Alex of Numberland fame) is a fascinating book on the world of translation that might well be this year's Just My Type

Selected by The Times' 'Daily Universal Register' as a 'Try This' Book

A fascinating...very readable study of the mysterious art and business of translation...Bellos asks big questions...and comes up with often surprising answers...sparky, thought-provoking

Forget the fish-it's David Bellos you want in your ear when the talk is about translation. Bellos dispels many of the gloomy truisms of the trade and reminds us what an infinitely flexible instrument the English language (or any language) is. Sparkling, independent-minded analysis of everything from Nabokov's insecurities to Google Translate's felicities fuels a tender-even romantic-account of our relationship with words.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? offers a lively survey of translating puns and poetry, cartoons and legislation, subtitles, news bulletins and the Bible

Please read David Bellos's brilliant book

A clear and lively survey...This book fulfils a real need; there is nothing quite like it.

In his marvellous study of the nature of translation...[David Bellos] has set out to make it fun...Essential reading for anyone with even a vague interest in language and translation - in short, it is a triumph

A dazzyingly inventive book

Witty and perceptive...stimulating, lucid, ultimately cheering

A wonderful, witty book about words, language and cultural anthropology by a scholar whose fascination with his subject is itself endlessly fascinating

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? strikes me as the best sort of nonfiction, an exhilarating work that takes up a subject we thought we understood - or knew we didn't - and then makes us see it afresh. Such high-order scholarly popularizations, accomplished with the grace and authority of a David Bellos, are themselves an irreplaceable kind of translation

Selected as a National Book Critics' Circle Award Criticism Finalist 2011