At the beginning of Chapter 8, Martin's life as a medical student is being described, including his feelings regarding some of his professors. Here's what it says about Professor Roscoe Geake:
"As an otolaryngologist he believed that tonsils had been placed in the human organism for the purpose of providing specialists with closed motors."
Classic Lewis, to be sure. But it made me think about the progression of cars. In Lewis day it was a status symbol to have one with a roof. Now the status is to be found in having one without.
The translator had a little trouble with this passage; "closed motors," which came out as 'hermetically sealed engines.' But this is curious in its own right. Not that it's unusual that a foreign translator would have trouble with a passage like 'closed motors,' but the translator does have a responsibility to try to make some sense of his source material. Why in the world would an ENT doctor care about an airtight engine, and what possible correlation does it have with tonsils?
One wonders: did he beat his head on it for a while only to finally decide that all it could possibly mean is 'airtight engine,' or did he just change the words without giving it a second thought? As good as most of the translation is, I suspect it must be the former.
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