Translation in Practice

It isn’t often that you find the whole text of a useful book online, so be sure to check out Translation in Practice.

In Translation

Can translators be superstars? A very few do seem to have celebrity status, at least in the world of literature. One thinks of people such as Maureen Freely, Eliot Weinberger, David Bellos, Clare Cavanagh, and Lawrence Venuti, among a few others.

And it is these people who have contributed short articles to a collection edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky, In Translation. To read how great translators think about their work is enough reason to get the book. But it’s also an interesting and thought-provoking collection of essays, mostly about translating into English.

In their introduction, Allen and Bernofsky talk about the importance of translation, especially into English. They write, “translators into English can be said to labor in the service of monolingualism, as translation consolidates the global domination of English by increasing the degree to which the culture of the entire globe is available through English. At the same time, translation works to strengthen the pluralism of world languages and cultures by giving writers in all languages the opportunity to reach English’s global audience while still writing in their native languages.” (p. xv)

They also note that a “paradigm shift in the translator’s role is under way…[t]here is a generational move toward an image of the translator as an intellectual figure empowered with agency and sensibility who produces knowledge by curating cultural encounters.” (p. xix) This helps to explain why we see books such as In Translation now.

There is a good range of topics explored here. For example, Peter Cole, a poet and translator from Hebrew and Arabic to English, writes about ethical issues and about what is required of a translator. He implies that translation can be an uncomfortable job, and that making decisions isn’t easy. “To remain in bilingual or even polyglot mysteries is to enjoy the full resonance of literary possibility—to be tortured by its pleasures, if not always to be pleased by the torture; to decide is to find oneself—for a while—blessedly free of those doubts, but also hemmed in by one’s choices, possibly forever.” (p. 4) Cole feels that translation is “a matter of life and death—of reprieve (extended life for the work and possible its translator) or of execution (Again, of the work and possibly its translator). And when that work is from an earlier era, it leads to either profanation or resurrection of the dead.” (p. 13) One can add that it’s about the author’s life or death too.

Meanwhile, Catherine Porter, a professor emerita of French and translator of academic texts from French, makes a case for translation being taken seriously as a scholarly activity. She writes, “If we agree that our institutions should meet the demand for educated translators and interpreters, we must make room for translation studies in our curricula and develop a more capacious understanding of translation as a scholarly pursuit. It is my belief that scholarly and literary translations should be accepted and evaluated on the same basis as scholarly monographs in decisions about hiring, promotion, and tenure.” (p. 58) That is an idea that will surely challenge many people within academia.

In other pieces, Maureen Freely talks about Turkish and translating Orhan Pamuk; Jose Manuel Prieto writes about translating Osip Mandelstam from Russian to Spanish (and Prieto’s essay is translated to English from Spanish by Esther Allen); Christi A. Merrill offers a riddle and the idea that translators and authors should be called “storywriters”; and Ted Goossen suggests that for English readers “books need to be dubbed, not subtitled” (p. 186) because of the audience and publishers’ demands for invisibility.

In short, the essays in this book are varied and fascinating, and the superstar authors/translators included raise many points to consider.

Revising and Editing for Translators

It can happen that we translators sometimes have to work with editors. But before we get to that stage, we have to edit ourselves. Brian Mossop’s book Revising and Editing for Translators is about what it means for a translator to be a proofreader and/or editor him- or herself, and the book explains it all in an easily understood and interesting way.

Sometimes translators hire other translators and have to check their work before the customer gets it, and sometimes a translator is employed by a company to proofread someone else’s translation. But despite translators proofreading our own work (we should do that anyway, but I know not everyone does) before sending it to the customer, we do not know always how to work with someone else’s texts.

Mossop discuss why a proofreader may be needed (there may be errors in the text, for example, or text style is not appropriate for the subject) and the types of proofreaders/editors available (subject-matter reviewers, copy editors, etc.) and various types of proofreading (scanning, spot-checking, etc.). Then he explains what it means to look for and fix typographical errors, grammatical mistakes, idiomatic errors, typos, punctuation mistakes, logic errors, factual errors, problems with the structure, among other things, and how to think about how a writer/translator uses language and style, and how readers influence a text (their background, for example, and why they read the text).

Mossop also provides issues to consider (such as when and where a translation is to be read or what errors a particular translator usually makes), and he gives advice on how to work with the translator whose texts you are proofreading (it is important to explain why changes are being made, rather than simply pointing out that they are necessary, so that the translator learns). So there is useful information in this book, although much of what he discusses is not actually that specific to translation.

The book also includes exercises, questions for discussion, suggestions for further reading and a glossary, so it is particularly suitable for students and new translators. But it is also worth reading for advanced translators. It contains information that is useful for both translators who are proofreading texts translated by others but also for translators who want to be better at editing their own texts.

Scientific and Technical Translation Explained

I met Jody Byrne at a translation conference in Shanghai in 2008 and he struck me as an intelligent, funny translator and academic. So I was thrilled to that his latest book, TEXT, has just been published. I look forward to reading it and I think many of you would find it useful too.

Translating Expressive Language in Children’s Literature

In a post that is shameless self-promotion, I’d like to mention that the book based on my PhD dissertation is now out. You can find more information here.

I had a wonderful experience as a PhD student, partially due to my fantastic supervisors, Professor Duncan Large and Professor Andy Rothwell. Hearing other people’s horror stories about the lack of support and consideration they got from their supervisors only reinforces my sense of gratitude at how thoughtful, helpful, and kind Duncan and Andy always were. It’s thanks to them that I have gotten this far.

I’m quite pleased the book is out, because I do think the work is actually pretty useful, for both translators and academics, because it looks at a topic that hasn’t been researched much in the past and offers concrete, pragmatic suggestions. I hope some of you will find it beneficial.

Is That a Fish In Your Ear? by David Bellos

I read quite a few books on translation and I can say that in my opinion the best book on translation came out in 2011 was Is That a Fish In Your Ear? by David Bellos. Bellos is professor of literature at Princeton and he translates from French to English.
Bellos’ book is not complicated and it is not about theory. Much of what he writes about has been written about in other books already, and often one can find much more information in other books than in his book. But what I like here is that he writes short, fairly simple mini-essays on many different aspects of translation. You can read a chapter here and a chapter there and learn something new and interesting without having to read the whole book if you do not want it. He writes, for example, about what translation is and is not, and what people say and think about translation, and how to use dictionaries, and on interpretation, and the European Union and language, and what the news has to do with translation, and automatic translation (he writes that it is not possible right now because “what you can say by means of translation is what the word means in the context in which it occurs” (p. 83), and a computer does not understand context), and dialects, and how we must rely on the translator or interpreter, and about poetry, and much more. It is clear that with so many topics, Bellos’ does not into much depth with them; in other words, in this book he discusses a little bit about a lot, and not much about just a little, as some readers would probably prefer. Personally, I like being able to dip in, but I understand that such a book is not for everyone.

What would we do without translation? Bellos writes, “Instead of using translation, we could learn the languages of all the communities we wish to engage with; or we could decide to speak the same language; or else adopt a single common language for communicating with other communities.” (p. 7) With 7000 or more different languages in the world it sounds unlikely. So we need translators, but why then do we have phrases such as traduttore traditore? Why are people suspicious of translators and translation in general? You can read about this in Bellos’ book.

Another thing that you can read about is how many non-translators believe that there is a right or good translation and a wrong or bad one. Bellos writes, “A translation can’t be right or wrong in the manner of a school quiz or a bank statement. A translation is more like a portrait in oils. The artist may add a pearl earring, give an extra flush to the cheek or miss out the grey hairs in the sideburns – and still give us a good likeness.” (p. 331) A translation is an interpretation and everyone interprets differently.

Sometimes a reader might wish that Bellos had written a whole book instead of just a short chapter on something, but as a whole, his book is very interesting and worth reading. His book is “en portrait in oils” – you or I might have added some jewelry or removed some hair, but it is still a beautiful painting.

Gillian Lathey and The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature

A few months ago, I published a review of Dr. Gillian Lathey’s latest contribution to translation studies. Her work on children’s literature is both important and fascinating, and she’s also a passionate speaker. Dr. Lathey, who teaches at Roehampton University in London, gave a great talk to my students this semester about the influence of translators on children’s literature and she also led a workshop for my MA students, encouraging them to look at various issues in regard to translating children’s lit. Here is the review:

The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature: Invisible Storytellers. Gillian Lathey. New York: Routledge, 2010. 241 pages. £76 (hardcover). ISBN: 078-0-415-98952-7.

Gillian Lathey’s latest contribution to the field of children’s literature in translation looks at the history of children’s literature in translation into English. Lathey provides an overview of translators and the role of the books and genres that they translated. As she points out, “Evidence from these biographical, bibliographical, and historical sources and from translators’ prefaces, afterwords, notes, and other writings has yet to be organised into a chronological account of translations and their resonance in English-language children’s literature. This book can only offer a starting point for such a major undertaking.” (5) It is an excellent starting point, and one can only hope that there will soon follow such histories of other languages.
Lathey’s book traces how early translators translated, without considering any particular special needs that children as an audience might have. Works for adults were read by and/or told to children, and this primarily included the Bible, romances/adventure stories, and fables and fairy tales. Even through the late 15th century, “[c]hildren were not yet regarded as separate consumers of texts other than books of instruction on courtesy and manners or schoolbooks.” (32) As Lathey points out, books became cheaper and more easily accessible via travelling booksellers, so children were able to read books not written or translated with a specific child audience in mind. Thus, children read what was available, and because such works were so popular, these were the ones that were most often translated. The style of translation generally seemed to include adaptation to the target culture. Lathey writes that “[i]t is hardly possible to speak of children experiencing cultural difference through these early translations of fables and romances, since multiple retellings had removed most cultural markers, but they did bring new kinds of stories to young readers. That novelty lay in the form of the short fable with its attached moral, or in the alternative, unsanctioned pleasures of the dramatic and episodic sixpenny romance.” (42)
Later on, writers and translators began to consider children as audiences with particular needs, and this led to the concept of writing works that could educate and improve children, while also entertaining them. A very popular book was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which was then translated and/or adapted in many countries. “Mapping and thereby controlling the natural world in fictional form was the province of the many European editions and reworkings of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, following Rousseau’s endorsement in Émile in 1762 of Defoe’s novel as the only text suitable for a child. The ‘robinsonnade’ was an unprecedented cross-cultural phenomenon in children’s literature, originating in Rousseau’s recommendation of Defoe’s novel as an exemplification of man’s autonomy and ability to improve his situation through intelligence, reflection, and hard word.” (62) This is a typical example, then, of adults using literature as a way of teaching children, and translators in turn felt they could change texts as needed, to better suit the target culture. The idea that the “child is a being whose natural instincts are not to be trusted, who is in constant danger of moral failure, disobedience, or succumbing to prejudice” (77) influenced how people then wrote or translated for children.
Things have changed today, so translators are very aware of who they are translating for. Instead of “religious persuasion, entertainment, and moral educational” (111), translators and theorists are more interested in a focus on child images and on appealing to what children want, rather than what adults think they need. “At the same time [as there has been increased academic interest in the topic] there has been an increase in the number of instances where translators directly address child readers, rather than their parents or teachers, in prefatory remarks.” (175) This affects what gets translated, by whom, and how.
Besides looking at which genres have been translated and how, Lathey also offers histories or case studies of some translators, such as William Caxton, Samuel Croxall, Helen Maria Williams, Thomas Holcroft, Mary Wollstonecraft, Edgar Taylor, Arthur Ransome (most people are unaware of his translation work), and Wanda Gág. She also has interviews with several more recent translators, Anthea Bell, Patricia Crampton, and Sarah Adams, about issues such as payment, working with editors, and methods for translation.
In this book, Lathey also briefly discusses topics such as the role of the Batchelder and Marsh awards, how the US and the UK were different in terms of translatorial strategies and practices in the 1930s, relay translations, women as translators and the related issue of the low status of translation, and more. Not all of these matters are covered in the detail that they deserve, but that is understandable given the scope of this work. Lathey aims here to “to trace in outline the chronology and impact of translators and translation on the history of children’s literature written in English and, wherever possible, to give an account of the motivation and methodology of translators working for a child audience.” (8) As such, her book is an important first step and it fills a gap in the field of translation studies. One can only hope that soon there will be such books for other languages/cultures as well, and that other researchers will pick up where Lathey has left off.

Why Translation Matters

I read Edith Grossman’s book Why Translation Matters and quite enjoyed it.

For those of us in translation already, Ms. Grossman is preaching to the choir, but she preaches so beautifully, so I recommend her book. She argues for the significance of translated work: for example, there are thousands of languages out there, though not all of them are written. Who would ever be able to read books in even a small percentage of those languages? Translation makes works available to us.

She also refers to the usual question of whether translation is possible. She writes, “It would never occur to anyone to ask whether it is feasible for an actor to perform a dramatic role or a musician to interpret a piece of music. Of course it is feasible, just as it is possible for a translator to rewrite a work of literature in another language.” (12) The question we should focus on, perhaps, is how well it can be or has been done.

Ms. Grossman also discusses xenophobia in the US and how this affects translation and, a related issue, how this is the case in the UK too. She points out that UK publishers “Anglicize” translations so they seem more British.

Other topics discussed here are how she translated Cervantes (she did not compared previous translations and she did decide to use footnotes), her work translating other authors, translating poetry in particular, her list of what she considers to be the most important translations, and her idea of how translations are never final (finality is bestowed by publishers’ due dates), among other things.

FAQ – References on Allusions

As I’ve said before, I get a lot of emails from people who ask me to tell them where to find books or articles on particular areas of translation studies. I do think research means that you should do the research, but of course it can be helpful to get book suggestions from other people.

So here are some reading subjects on the topic of allusions/intertextuality in general and on translating cultural/political/literary/religious/other references:

Graham Allen, Intertextuality (London: Routledge, 2000).

Richard Bauman, A World of Others’ Words (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).

Mieke K.T. Desmet, ‘Intertextuality/Intervisuality in Translation: The Jolly Postman’s Intercultural Journey from Britain to the Netherlands’, The Translation of Children’s Literature, ed. Gillian Lathey (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006).

B.J. Epstein, “Life is Just an Allusion,” in Crossing Textual Boundaries in International Children’s Literature, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, spring 2011

B.J. Epstein, “Manipulating the Next Generation: Translating Culture for Children,” in Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 41-76, autumn 2010
Belén González Cascallana, “Translating Cultural Intertextuality in Children’s Literature”, in Van Coillie, Jan, and Walter P. Verschueren, eds., Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2006), 97-110.

William Irwin, ‘Against Intertextuality’, Philosophy and Literature, vol. 28, nr. 2, (October 2004), 227-242.

Ritva Leppihalme, Notes on Culture Bumps: An Empirical Approach to the Translation of Allusions (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1997).

Ulrike H. Meinhof and Jonathan Smith, eds. Intertextuality and the Media: From Genre to Everyday Life (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

Mary Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts (Cambridge: Polity, 2003).

Isabel Pascua-Febles, “Translating Cultural References: The Language of Young People in Literary Texts,” in Van Coillie, Jan, and Walter P. Verschueren, eds., Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2006), 111-121.

Lost in Translation

For my birthday in October, one of the gifts I received was Lost in Translation by Charlie Croker. It’s a funny collection of odd English phrases and sentences from around the world. Some of the mistakes come from bad translations, but many are simply due to people trying to write in English even though their language skills aren’t quite up to it.

A Chinese hotel tells guests: “We serve you with hostiality.” A Japanese shopping bag offers this message: “Now baby. Tonight I am feeling cool and hard boiled.” In the Czech Republic, people are warned: “No smoothen the lion.” An Australian dish is “dumping soup” while an Indian restaurant includes “Aborigines” in their brinjal bhaji and a Greek dish is “chopped cow with a wire through it and bowels in sauce.” Yum.

This is a light, fun book that made me giggle. I wish people took translation more seriously but if they did, we wouldn’t have these mistakes to laugh at.

More Metaphors

If you read this blog, you know I’m always interested in metaphors for translation. Well, there’s an entire book on the subject now, Thinking Through Translation with Metaphors, edited by James St. André.

As Ben Van Wyke points out in his contribution, which is about metaphors relating to bodies and clothes, translation and metaphor have always been tightly linked:

“The word for translation in English, as well as in many other European languages, comes from the Latin translation, which is a translation of the Greek metaphora, the word from which English derives “metaphor.” In ancient Greek, metaphora was used in the sense that we employ the word “metaphor” today, as well as for translation from one language into another. Thurs, related in this way, translation and metaphor both imply the notion of carrying over or transferring meaning from one word or phrase to another.” (18)

In this anthology, Celia Martín de León talks about the metaphor of footsteps, while Sergey Tyulenev discusses translation as a form of smuggling, and Yotam Benshalom focuses on performance, among other metaphors analyzed.

The book also includes a helpful bibliography of works that discuss metaphors for translation.

This is a light, enjoyable read that might give readers new ways of understanding old metaphors as well as offer entirely new metaphors for thinking about translation.

The Entrepreneurial Linguist

The translating twins, Dagmar and Judy Jenner, who also run a great blog, have recently published a book, The Entrepreneurial Linguist.

The premise of their book is that translators need to run their business as though it were, well, a business. Too many of us translators view ourselves as freelancers rather than businesspeople and we act accordingly, so the Jenner twins provide a lot of helpful advice and practical suggestions for how we can act more business-like. They discuss what it means to have a business and how said business can work best for both the owner and the customers.

They start the book with the basics, such as what you should buy for your office and how you can save money on necessary goods. Then they use case studies, as is done in business school, to look at what a customer wants, what the translator and business-owner wants, and how a compromise can be reached. They also look at a variety of related topics, such as how a translator can make use of blogging and Facebook, how to negotiate and decide prices, marketing and media coverage, how to find and work with customers, why conferences and other types of professional development are useful, how to keep a good work-life balance, how to avoid isolation as a translator, why volunteer work is good to do, how to work towards and reach goals, and much more.

This is not a book about the linguistic aspects of translation or about translation theory or other such issues. Instead, The Entrepreneurial Linguist is a very detailed and thorough book about how to “run a business like a business,” even if your business is just a small one. It’s a perfect book for people just starting out in the field, but it also has useful information for more experienced translators. The Jenner twins have hit a very important point: translators must be professional, if we want to be successful and to have other people respect our profession, and this book gives tips on how to accomplish that.

Translators on Translating

While convalescing from surgery a few weeks ago, I enjoyed reading Andrew Wilson’s new book Translators on Translating. Each themed chapter includes quotes, anecdotes, and extracts from practicing translators, and it makes translators and their thoughts on translation more visible.

Many of the usual suspects are included (such as Douglas Robinson, Lawrence Venuti, Martin Luther, Anthea Bell), but there are also names that are less familiar, such as Sharon M. Bell, Cathy Hirano, Eivor Martinus, Moura Budberg), and it’s very interesting to get such a wide variety of views, from different countries, languages, and time periods.

The themes include work (Samuel Johnson refers to translation as “the great pest”), technical translation, the relationship between translators and authors (Wilson points out that “[f]ew authors will ever have occasion to read a translator’s work with anything like the attention the translator puts into theirs, and fewer still are actually capable of judging the quality of the translation.”), translation theory (Andrew Chesterman and Emma Wagner say that “[m]essages from the ivory tower tend not to penetrate as far as the wordface. (The wordface is the place where we translators work – think of a miner at the coalface.)”), and more.

Wilson’s book is more than an anthology of extracts, as he explores many of the concepts and adds his own opinions and experiences. It’s a fun and fascinating book to dip into.

References on Translating Children’s Literature

For my second list of references (the first list was on translation in general), I thought I’d offer a list of books on translating children’s literature, which happens to be my area of special.

Hallford, Deborah, and Edgardo Zaghini, Outside In: Children’s Books in Translation (London: Milet, 2005).

Klingberg, Göte, Barn- och ungdomslitteraturforskning: områden, metoder, terminologi [Research on Children’s Literature: Areas, Methods, Terminology] (Göteborg: Lärarhögskolan, 1969).

Klingberg, Göte, Barn- och ungdomslitteraturen [Children’s Literature] (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1970).

Klingberg, Göte, Barnlitteraturforskning. En introduktion [Research on Children’s Literature: An Introduction] (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1972).

Klingberg, Göte, Översättningen av barn- och ungdomsböcker: en metodisk förundersökning [The Translation of Children’s Literature: A Methodological Preliminary Investigation] (Göteborg : Lärarhögskolan, 1974).

Klingberg, Göte, Att översätta barn- och ungdomsböcker: empiriska studier och rekommendationer [Translating Children’s Literature: Empirical Studies and Recommendations] (Mölndal: Lärarhögskolan, 1977).

Klingberg, Göte, ed., Children’s Books in Translation: the Situation and the Problems. Proceedings of the third symposium of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978).

Klingberg, Göte, De främmande världarna i barn- och ungdomslitteraturen [Strange Worlds in Children’s Literature] (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1980).

Klingberg, Göte, Children’s Fiction in the Hands of Translators (Stockholm: CWK, 1986).

Gillian Lathey, ed. The Translation of Children’s Literature (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006).

Oittinen, Riitta, I am Me – I am Other. On the Dialogics of Translating for Children (Tampere: University of Tampere, 1993).

Oittinen, Riitta, Translating for Children (New York: Garland, Inc., 2000).

O’Sullivan, Emer, Comparative Children's Literature, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Routledge, 2005).

Jan Van Coillie and Walter P. Verschueren, eds., Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2006).

Thinking Italian Translation

I was looking at the Thinking Italian Translation book put out by Routledge as part of my thus-far lazy effort to learn Italian. This book is part of a series that also includes Spanish, German, and French. These texts do not teach you the language, but they teach you to think about the language from a translator’s perspective and thus they’re quite useful both for translators and for language-learners (well, for language-learners of a certain nerdy inclination, like yours truly).

There is some basic information, such as explanations of sociolect, adverbs, code-switching, and calques, among other topics, and there is information on scientific and technical translation and legal and business translation. Throughout the book, there are a number of examples, tips, and practical exercises. There are also several chapters on contrastive linguistics, in which the authors compare and analyze linguistic features in English and Italian, such as the conditional tense.

References on Translation

I often get emails from people who ask me for reading lists and while I don't think I should do people's research for them, as I've said before, I can provide some suggestions. And if any readers come up with other books and articles that could be of use, feel free to add them in the comments.

So, for the first such list, I thought I'd offer some good introductory texts on translation. These will serve as a useful academic basis for a deeper understanding of what translation is and what translators do.

Mona Baker: In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation

Basil Hatim and Ian Mason: Discourse and the Translator

Clifford E. Landers: Literary Translation: A Practical Guide

André Lefevere: Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context

Jeremy Munday: Introducing Translation Studies

Peter Newmark: Approaches to Translation

Peter Newmark: A Textbook of Translation

Eugene A. Nida and Charles R. Taber: The Theory and Practice of Translation

Christiane Nord: Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained

Gideon Toury: Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond

More Metaphors

In the last post, I discussed Translation in Practice, edited by Gill Paul and published by Dalkey Archive Press. The book offered two new metaphors, one for translation and one for editing.

Mahmoud Darwish is quoted giving another metaphor of translation: “The translator is not a ferryman for the meaning of the words but the author of their web of new relations. And he is not the painter of the light part of the meaning, but the watcher of the shadow, and what it suggests.” (5)

And Ros Schwartz describes a metaphor of editing: “A good editor is like a midwife – he or she helps bring forth that perfectly formed translation that is inside you but doesn’t necessarily emerge unaided.” (65)

The Relationship between Translators and Editors

The title of the new book Translation in Practice, edited by Gill Paul and published by Dalkey Archive Press, is a misnomer. It is a very short (70 pages) book that seems – judging by the title and some of the topics mentioned – to want to be an introduction to various issues on translation but actually is mostly on the process of editing and the relationship between translator and editor. It would have been better called The Role of Editors in Translation or The Relationship between Translators and Editors, or something along those lines. A book on that subject would be interesting and worthwhile and if one focuses on that aspect of Translation in Practice, then one gets something out of it.

This books briefly introduces information about issues such as the role of the outside reader, picking a translator, what a sample translation is and if a translator should get paid for it, what it means for two translators to collaborate on a topic, contracts (both in terms of money and also in terms of relationships, such as establishing boundaries between translators and writers), schedules, publicity (though just one paragraph on this), style, particular challenges such as swear words or humor, what it means to be edited, the use of UK vs. US English, and so on. The issues have generally been discussed in more detail in other texts. It also offers ideas that it doesn’t really explain, such as by defining a bad translation as a “flat” one (69), which is a definition that needs more exploration, or by saying that translators should be paid if their work is used in a relay translation (53), which in fact is something that rarely happens, although Translation in Practice doesn’t analyze why that is the case or how to change it.

But the main part of the text, as already mentioned, explores the jobs of and relationship between the translator and the editor. It offers lists of dos and don’ts for translators and editors. For example, translators should “keep careful notes of changes and decisions made in the process of translating” and “carefully recreate the nuances of the original language” (this last point is one of the major difficulties of translation!), but not “take major liberties with the author’s text without reference to both editor and author” (what is a “major liberty”?) or “anglicize a book beyond recognition” (where is the border here?) (57-8). An editor should “approach the text as an original book rather than a translation” (a debatable point, I’d say) and not “rewrite the text in their own voice, changing the vocabulary choices that the translator has made.” (70-1) The book assumes that English is the target language, so it does not look into issues relevant to the publishing industry elsewhere, though the process of working with editors and publishers in other countries would be fascinating to learn about. Still, what it does discuss regarding the editing process in English-language publishing companies is interesting.

One other comment on the Dalkey book is that oddly, a couple of times a translator is quoted but not named or a translation is mentioned but the name of the translator is not provided (such as on pages 2 and 42-3), so the translator remains invisible. Of course, if this person chose to be anonymous, that should be stated. But if not, this shows how far translators still have to go in terms of visibility.

Translation in Practice tries to cover a lot of ground, but not in any great detail. So it is a good overview, but definitely not the final word.

Point of Contact

Earlier this summer, I read Point of Contact, a journal/book from Syracuse University. This issue is about Saúl Yurkievich and his translator Cola Franzen and is a bilingual edition of their letters, as well as a few essays and art, with an introduction by and an interview with Franzen. The book also comes with a CD of a dual-language reading of Saúl’s work. And, it has some previously unpublished poems by Yurkievich but, oddly, they were not translated by Franzen.

It is fascinating to get to see how the translator and her writer correspond, how they discuss and negotiate, how they doubt, clarify, explain, how they work through the publishing process and receive awards, and how, over the years of their correspondence (1982-2003) they become closer, which ultimately helps the translation work.

Some messages are rows of corrections (such as pp. 96-97), while others are about who to submit to and when (41-43), and still others use metaphors to describe the translation process. For example, Cola writes “My feeling about the poem is that it is like a soap bubble, and that my task is to launch it, get it spinning, not let it land or break until the last word when it just blinks out.” (44) and “…the poems are yours, no matter what linguistic clothes they are wearing. It must be strange for you to see your poems turn up in new skins…” (49)

Most interesting of all are the explanations, from Saúl about what he meant in his originals and from Cola about how she has chosen certain translations. For example, she writes “for el gran ovillo se engalleta, I have decided on the enormous skein becomes knotted. We don’t use jamming, jam up for hair, or threads, or fiber. Those are tangled, snarled or knotted. A mechanical part that sticks is jammed; traffic is jammed, etc. I played with the idea of snarl, ensnarled, but it’s such an ugly sounding word, and engalleta is so nice, with the cookie embedded in it. And then animals snarl…it’s a sound-word as well. Knotted is in a way harsher than snarled, and the poem is turning more serious at that line…” (36-7)

The correspondence clearly reveals the attention paid to each poem, each word. I noticed some typos and errors in the book/journal issue, but if one can overlook that, it is worth reading to get insight into the translator-writer relationship.

A Guide to Working as Freelance Translator

A translation company contacted me earlier this year about a book they have written. It contains a lot of basic information about working as a freelance translator and could be useful to those of you who are now starting your translation careers.