Hans Eberstark (27 January 1929, Vienna – 19 December 2001) was an Austrian linguist and translator, known as a mental calculator, multilinguist and interpreter.

Life

Eberstark often lectured on language and translation in Europe and was known for asking someone whose first language was a small local dialect of German (particularly Swiss German, of which there are countless dialects) to speak with him (during the lecture); after a few minutes Eberstark would suddenly start speaking fluently in that dialect.

Eberstark was living in Vienna, Austria, when he joined Mensa International. After he moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1965 to work as an interpreter with the International Labour Organization, he founded Mensa Switzerland. He took early retirement in 1967 and became a free-lance and also taught courses in translating and interpreting at the University of Geneva. During an earlier attempt he had intended on reciting roughly half that many but had made a mistake. He was angry with himself for the mistake so he memorized even more.

Eberstark once wrote that the "external rewards" of excelling in mental arithmetic were "Making friends, making money, showing off, and giving pleasure."

Bibliography

  • "Verba Volant, Scripta Manent: Dolmetachen und Ubersetzen: Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede."

References

Further reading

  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20140526020137/http://business.highbeam.com/436007/article-1G1-201547091/many-tongues-hans-eberstark-can-make-himself-understood] Jeremy Bernstein, "In Many Tongues: Hans Eberstark Can Make Himself Understood in Dozens of Languages, and Can Memorize Nearly Endless Strings of Words and Numbers. He Assumes That Everyone Else Can Too, With a Little Work," The Atlantic, October 1, 1993
  • [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64okP1EOgKY] Eberstark displaying his knowledge of different accents in French and English, followed by his demonstration of knowledge of the sequence of numbers in pi (00:30 to 15:00)