A copy that went past the desk to the printer’s the other day had an error supposedly of translation, from Bengali into English while the expression in Bengali is, in fact, a loan translation from English. The report has quoted a public servant as blaming an error, seemingly textual or editorial, on to the printer’s devil although no devil, or young apprentice, always stained black with ink now works in printing houses. Devil, which according to a theory has come from Deville, said to be Willam Caxton’s apprentice, has no place in modern-day printing houses where people punch in texts with computer keybaords unlike in olden days when a compositor had to set the text by hand with metal sorts one by one before the text was ready for printing.
A special daemon, Titivillus, or the original printer’s devil, as another belief goes, used to haunt every printing office, doing mischeifs such as inverting types or misspelling words. The daemon is said to have been influencing printer’s devils or young aprentices to excute his mischiefs. And, any errors in texts were usually put down to the printer’s devil, either under influence or because of the absence of skills.
The copy at hand had the expression ‘chhapakhanar bhut’ (ছাপাখানার ভূত), literally meaning ‘a daemn in a printing house’ from the English phrase ‘printer’s devil’, translated back as ‘ghosts in the printing press’, marring both the story of the origin and the connotation. The expression for what the printer’s devil did, or typographical errors, in Bengali is too close — ‘chhapakhanar bhul’ (ছাপাখানার ডুল) or ‘chhapar bhul’ (ছাপার ভুল). Malayalam has a similar case — printing error is അച്ചടി പിശക് (accaṭi piśak) and printing devil is അച്ചടി പിശാച് (accaṭi piśāc), but not as close as the Bengali expressions are.
A back translation of a loan translation in the report did not, however, clearly pay.
