CONQUEST BY MAN SIR,—In reviewing my translation of Paul Herrmann's
Conquest by Man in the Spectator of Octdber 22, your reviewer, Glyn Daniel, criticises the author's style and then adds in parenthesis, ' unless he is totally misrepresen• ted by his translator.' It seems to me that, unless he knows the contrary to he true through having referred to the original, the reviewer of a translation should assume it to he an accurate reflection of the original. As it happens, my translation was read and enthusiastically approved by the author (who reads English fluently), and he says as much in his foreword to the English edition, where he also explains his reasons for writing the book in the style he has chosen—though he does not, of course, describe it in quite the same terms as your reviewer
Incidentally, why pick on an extract for quotation which has immediately to be quali- fied by remarking that ' the book is not as bad as this extract would suggest "/--Youre faithfulIy,
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