The first things that came to mind when I was asked to write about the experience of translating Benedict XVI’s Last Testament were uninteresting and entirely predictable: all the unforeseen consequences one might expect when an early career academic finds himself with a gargantuan, if awesome, task to complete in very little time.
Making my way tortuously through 288 pages of freshly printed German text in August, in an extreme bout of overwork, led to moments of anxiety. I worried about even slightly misconstruing the intended meaning of the former pope’s words, panicked about when I would finish my own book (which I was supposed to be submitting to the publishers that month) and, most serious of all, felt an overarching sense of guilt at a wholly unsatisfactory neglect of my wife and son over the August Bank Holiday.
