23 October 2008
Entry 6
Answering your questions
Other work has prevented me from making much translation progress to report on this week, so I’ll take the opportunity instead to respond to some of the comments and questions you’ve been emailing me.
First, then, in response to some of the particular questions I raised:
The question of how to deal with untranslatable local words seems to have struck a chord; the responses seem to be guided by what you prefer as readers – and that’s certainly my own measure, I avoid footnotes as a translator because they annoy me as a reader. So ‘No marking in the text’, says Alex Z, suggesting instead endnotes; while Anne, also a translator, suggests an option I hadn’t thought of – a glossary. She doesn’t mind footnotes, but the glossary gets her vote (and she gets annoyed when there are words in a book that require explanation and no glossary offered).
That opening line from Chapter 2 also brought up some preferences – First of May Square, said Sara, rather than Primeiro de Maio, which is the solution I’m leaning towards too. Rather than ‘speaking to the crowd’ or ‘talking to the crowd’, Alex offered ‘addressing the crowd’, which I think is just right.
(‘Speaking’ is clearly an acceptable alternative – speaking to a crowd sounds right; whereas talking to a crowd is plainly wrong. Anyone venture an explanation why? I’m sure I can’t, except that I just know one is right and one isn’t…)
Matt of the armchair reader blog asked a few interesting general questions, which I’ll take one by one:
1) How closely do you communicate with the author?
Very closely – we’re in touch frequently, fortunately. I would find it hard to do this if I couldn’t use him a lot. Agualusa is very patient with my persistent questions, which is a great help; and he also has a very good understanding of what translation entails, so he’s not unrealistically precious about the integrity of every word of his original, which is an even greater help…
2) There are two poles – capturing literal accuracy and capturing the feel of the original – do you agree? Do you feel this is more or less true regarding contemporary translations of prose?
I think that’s true in theory, but in practice – when we’re talking about books that are sold in bookshops, just fiction, sold on an equal footing with books originally in English – I don’t know many translators who will compromise on the readability of the work in the interests of literal accuracy. I think for me the most important thing is not fidelity of word by relentless word, but fidelity of the reading experience. If the original has a joke you’re supposed to laugh at, sometimes you just have to change the joke a bit to make it still funny in English – keeping some of the details may be good where possible, but keeping the laugh itself is important too.
3) What inspired you to become a translator? I saw that you’re also working on non-fiction works of your own – do you consider that or translating to be your main priority?
I’ve translated for a very long time, just technical or academic things, and with no aspirations to be a literary translator. It never occurred to me that I could do it, to be honest. And then a friend at Arcadia Books asked if I’d translate a book by Agualusa for them – I’d read the book and loved it, so said yes. Then, of course, wondered why I’d been so foolish to say yes, and what hubris to think I could get away with it.
Yes, I have a few different hats – I write a fair bit, I edit reference books, I translate – and sometimes (to mix hat/star metaphors) one or other is ascendant. It’s sometimes because of particular things that catch my interest, sometimes because of the jobs that happen to be offered to me (at the moment I’m suddenly being offered quite a lot of translation work, relatively less writing work, for example), but I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I can just look at each project as it’s offered to me and decide whether or not I like the sound of it, and that usually leaves me with a good mix of things, which is how I prefer it. I’m not sure I could do any one of these all the time.
4) Translators typically receive less credit than the original authors of the work – how do you feel about that? Many publishers seem to go out of their way to hide the fact that the work has been translated – do you think this is more a response to a public distrust of translation of a contributing factor to the lack of awareness of the importance of translation?
Hmm, I’m going to leave this one. This is a big question – basically, what’s wrong with the publishing-translations world, which deserves more than a paragraph or two. I might do a post just on this at some point, I think – I do think you’re absolutely right to point out the problem, and the reasons you suggest are I’m sure at least part of the explanation.
But to answer quickly the first question you mention – I think it’s right that original authors receive more credit. I think they do the harder job, the bigger job, and I think even after translation the book is still more theirs than mine. That said, the translator should of course always receive a decent credit, as our role is far from insignificant!
On to Claudio (who translates Isak Dinesen and others into Portuguese), who asked whether it would be possible to include the Portuguese original alongside the translations that appear on the site. Yes, I’ll certainly try to quote the original when I’m talking about specific bits of text when it’s just odd lines or phrases, but I won’t often be looking at very big chunks of the original text on this blog simply because I’m assuming most visitors aren’t Portuguese readers. But if you are a Portuguese reader I’d urge you to get hold of the original and read the whole thing anyway, as it’s a marvellous book…
In the ‘further reading’ category, Sara recommended a look at Umberto Eco’s Mouse or Rat, which I agree is fascinating, and certainly worth reading if you don’t know it. And Chris Hughes has drawn my attention to a translation wiki, which looks like a great project to enable access to amazing writing – have a look at their work on Brazilian writer Artur Azevedo here: www.librilang.org
Now, to Joey Rubin and ZD Smith and others who asked about getting an RSS feed or some way of knowing when a new post has gone up, the answer is I think someone is working on this, but I’ll let you know when I know what’s happening… [that's right. Ed.]
And finally a special mention to Roland whose comment included the word ‘sonorities’, which I think is lovely and I’ll have to use for something too very soon if I can.
Thanks for these messages, and all the others. Will respond to any others as they appear.
Will leave you with the words of Alex Z, translator from the Czech, who ended his comment “translation is impossible. And yet it must be done.” Brilliant. Will quote that a lot.
More next week – have a good weekend.
PS Just one further little observation; most of the comments seem to be coming from people who are themselves translators. I don’t know if that’s because it’s only translators reading the blog or only translators choosing to share their opinions on things. If there are non-translators out there, I’d love to hear from you with your thoughts too!
If you would like to comment on this blog, email translationblog@booktrust.org.uk
Estação das Chuvas © José Eduardo Agualusa
English translation © Daniel Hahn
