A Round-Up of Articles

It’s time for another round-up of articles!

This article is on Gabriel García Márquez and Roberto Bolaño and their translators. Translator Natasha Wimmer says, “A lot of translators enjoy being the power behind the throne.”

Here’s a piece on Yiddish.

I like Oliver Burkeman’s writing and in this article on “invisible” jobs, he mentions interpreter. Translator isn’t listed, but many people think it should be.

Check out how animals sound in different languages.

Are there untranslatable words? That’s a regular topic of discussion.

Here are some collective nouns. What would we call a group of translators?

Tips for Translators

English-to-Hebrew translator Gili Bar Hillel recently asked other translators, including me, for tips for new translators, which she then posted on her blog. Her original post was in Hebrew, but due to popular demand, she’s now put an English version up.

Delighted Beauty: An Interview with Tom Cheesman

Dr Tom Cheesman at Swansea University runs a fantastic website, Delighted Beauty, on the multiple translations of great writings, and the differences between the translations, and what that can tell us about the work in question.

 You can try out the site/tool here and you can read about it in this article.

 How to use http://www.delightedbeauty.org/vvv: a 2-minute introduction:

 • Sign in top right of home page, as guest (instructions provided). Select Corpora > Othello corpus > Open.

 • On the right of the ‘Base text’ pane, the buttons lead to various visualisations. (Another is accessed by clicking any name in the corpus.)

 • First choose ‘E & V’ (Eddy and Viv): and for a good example of what’s on offer, locate Brabantio’s ‘Here is the man, this Moor’, click on it, and then try the ‘Sort by’ and ‘Order’ options above.

Dr Cheesman agreed to answer a few questions for Brave New Words.

Q: Why did you decide to start this project?

A: A few years ago I was working on a very interesting and controversial trans-adaptation of Othello, by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel. They said in an interview that they’d looked at “more than a dozen” other German translations. I’d no idea there were so many. Thinking of comparing their translation with earlier and contemporary ones, I started collecting books and scripts. Soon I had about 40: far too many! Studying multiple translations throws up problems of presentation, scale and navigation. They’re all acts of interpretation both of the translated work and of their own cultural contexts; they differ in countless details, all of which can be significant and interesting; it’s difficult to present a study of such a mass of texts without demanding far too much of your reader. You can study how a tiny sample gets differently translated; I did that, with one couplet, and I also created a website for crowd-sourcing the same couplet in any language. But really I wanted to find a way to explore whole texts and whatever aspects we want to. In 2010 my colleague David Berry convinced me of the potential of computational methods. Amazing work such as Ben Fry’s Traces made me realise that web-based digital tools, especially data visualization techniques, can help anyone explore multiple translations of anything, any way they want. Instead of being piled on shelves, digitised translations are available for anyone to look into (subject to ©). Text data visualisations (textviz) can work with full text contents (like the ‘parallel view’ on our site), or with representations derived from texts (using non-words, like our ‘alignment maps’, or words, as in things like Wordles). So textviz can bypass language barriers to some extent: I can find things out about Chinese translations compared to Russian ones, without knowing either language. In our ‘Eddy and Viv’ view, we use machine translation, which cries out for a user correction and discussion option, in a Wiki or whatever: still, it’s useful. -- ‘Eddy and Viv’ was a key conceptual breakthrough: at some point I worked out that formulae from information retrieval and stylometry could be adapted to put a mathematical value on the ‘distinctiveness’ of a translation in relation to others (a lot of retranslations are often similar, but some are more dissimilar than others); and that, if you first break a translated text into segments (sentences, play-speeches, or whatever), and then calculate distinctiveness values for all the translations of each one, then you can derive a value for the amount of variation among translations which a segment provokes. Where in a text do translators disagree more and less? Which speeches, which character parts? That’s the idea behind the tool we call ‘Eddy and Viv’.

Q: Was it a challenge to find funding? What about to find collaborators/contributors?

A: The idea might take a few minutes to explain but is basically simple and powerful, and funders like that. I’ve been very lucky with collaborators here in Swansea. David Berry put me in touch with a Computer Scientist, Bob Laramee, a specialist in Data Visualization. He’d not worked with texts before but was intrigued by the idea, and he and his PhD Zhao Geng have done some great work – as yet offline. Then we came across some fascinating text visualisation work by Stephan Thiel, doing just the kind of things we were interested in: ‘Understanding Shakespeare’. Obviously here was a designer we could work with. And Stephan was up for it. Our university’s Research Institute for Arts and Humanities funded a pilot project – an RA, Alison Ehrmann, copied and scanned my collection of German Othellos. We had a really good break when I requested a free trial of OCR software from ABBYY, and their UK sales manager Colin Miller got in touch personally and offered to help. He gave us free use of their Recognition Server, with Gothic fonts recognition and a suite of historical and modern dictionaries. And finally, along came the AHRC with their ‘Digital Transformations’ funding opportunity, just as my head of department, Andy Rothwell, recruited Kevin Flanagan to do a PhD here on Translation Memory. Kevin just happens to have all the skills and attitude needed to build a corpus management database and segment/align tools from scratch in order to make a ‘Translation Array’ actually work, feeding data to cool interfaces designed by Stephan at Studio Nand. I can’t code for toffee. It could all have gone horribly wrong.

Q: What has been one of your most interesting findings/realisations?

A: Lots! At the level of ‘Tell me about German Othellos’, my one-couplet sample study showed that in the 1950s and 60s, translations briefly became more distinctive or perhaps ‘daring’ than ever, then more conservative than ever, and then around 1990 they became really quite wild. The Array confirms that overall pattern but with some adjustments. Now the translator Hermann Motschach, in the 1990s, turns out to be right at the top of the scale, or to put it another way, his version is wildly wilful in almost every line. There is no public information at all about Hermann Motschach, except that he has translated almost all of Shakespeare’s plays and his scripts are used quite a lot by German theatres. Needs studying!

I found out a lot of interesting things when I researched the short descriptions I wrote for each translation. The stories behind them tell the 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century history of Germany and Austria. Check out Bab/Levy and Zeynek, for instance.

More broadly, I keep finding out about more and more examples of multiple translations, sometimes quite astonishing, all grist to the Arrays mill of the future. For example, Project Yao is a database of American fiction in Chinese, co-created by Joe Lockard, who tells me that some canonical novels such as Call of the Wild, published in 3 or 4 translations until about 1990, have since been published in up to 40 translations: that’s different translations, not re-editions. The sheer volume of versions of Shakespeare is crazy, too…

Q: What have you enjoyed the most about this project? And the least? A: The worst thing is that now that we’ve created this site with its array of Othellos, I have no time to use it for research, to explore the texts and find out how they vary and what that might correlate with. (Do translators translate Othello’s part more differently than other parts? is one question raised by what I’ve been able to do so far.) The priority now is to get more funding. When I’m not teaching, preparing teaching, or writing for you, BJ, I’m working on the next grant proposal.

There are many good things. Working with my collaborators. The delight of Jan Rybicki at seeing the platform: as soon as it was launched he started using it to work on his English-Polish novels corpus. The sense of exciting new horizons. What we have is a proof of concept prototype which just demonstrates the potential in a small way. This could become a big deal, not just for translation studies, comparative studies, language studies, cross-cultural studies, but beyond ‘studies’: for public understanding of translation and language, and for creative translation practice. If you’re doing a new translation/adaptation of a classic, and 300 versions are explorable online, in umpteen languages, with interpretative tools and a global social network around them, then of course you can ignore that. But you have some interesting new options too. 

Thank you so much, Dr Cheesman! And good luck with Delighted Beauty!

Another Round-Up

A short NPR news segment looks at translation and interviews three translators.

This article is on the future of books and publishing.

Here is an essay on bilingualism.

And just for fun, from the same site, an essay on procrastination. Warning: this might keep you from your work!

A Round-Up of Articles

Time for another round-up of articles!

The first article is on the translation of Chinese menus. As you know, I love menu translations.

The next piece is on literary lists. I personally love to make lists so I was interested in this article. What would be on a list of books about translation and/or language?

The third article is about the Pennsylvania Dutch (actually German, not Dutch) language/dialect. What words sound like home to you?

Next, we have an article on the disappearance of the semi-colon.

This BBC piece is about the perfect voice.

Learning languages is another of my interests, so I enjoyed this article on that topic, specifically on learning Hebrew.

Continuing with Hebrew, this article is about translating to and from that language. Thank you to Erika Dreifus for sending me this article!

A Round-Up of Articles

Here is some reading material for the weekend.

A few of my previously published articles are now available on the website for Sveriges Facköversättarförening (the Swedish Association of Professional Translators).

There is an article in the New York Times by Richard Pevear about translating Tolstoy’s War and Peace with Larissa Volokhonsky. Pevear and Volokhonsky are known for their English translations of Russian classics.

Steven Pinker discusses why we swear in this article.

Another piece from the New York Times is on a Spanish-based creole language in Columbia.

Some interviews with translators were posted this summer on Conversational Reading. See here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Translating Primo Levi

Readers of the New Yorker might have noticed that quite a few recent issues have included stories by late authors, two of which were by Primo Levi. Ann Goldstein translated one of those stories from the Italian (Alessandra Bastagli translated the other one) and she talks about his work and the translation of it on the New Yorker’s website.

In this interview, Ms. Goldstein discusses, among other things, Mr. Levi’s “precise” language and his use of scientific terms; she says that she chooses scientific words in English that the reader may not know rather than simplifying them because she is aware of the fact that Italian readers, too, wouldn’t necessarily recognize all those terms. Thus, she attempts to retain Mr. Levi’s intentions.

An interesting note is that Ms. Goldstein seems to say that her first translation from Italian was published in the New Yorker. I’m sure many of us who work as literary translators, or would like to, don’t ever get published in that magazine, much less with our very first job! She is now one of the translators of the forthcoming collected works of Primo Levi.

Translator Joachim Neugroschel

I happened to find an interview with translator Joachim Neugroschel, who has translated from French, German, Italian, Russian, and Yiddish, and also to German. I found some of his ideas about translation a little different from those of other literary translators. For example, he never reads a book before translating it, because he says he has “[n]o reason to.” How, then, does he decide what to translate and what to turn down? Apparently, money is the answer, as he says, “If the publisher pays me enough, I will do the translation.” Many translators say they need to feel they have something in common with the authors they translate, or at least some feeling of empathy and interest, but Mr. Neugroschel doesn’t feel it is necessary to even have much knowledge of the author’s work, because he can just “get the style” by reading a page.

Interestingly, he also claims that you can tell a bad translation just by reading it, which suggests that all you need it the target text and then you can judge the translation. Obviously, I disagree with that, and feel that you do need to know an author’s work and the source language to be able to truly judge the quality of a translation. Bad grammar could be part of the source text on purpose, so if it is in the target text, that doesn’t necessarily mean the translation is poor. Also, many other things could make a translation bad, such as if the translator has misunderstood the original document or has tried to improve it, or if the word choices don’t accurately represent it. And it is difficult for a monolingual reader to judge any of that.

As a side note, I wonder if Kafka really would find Mr. Neugroschel’s translation excellent. It isn’t that I doubt the latter’s abilities, but if Kafka didn’t even want his work published, what would he think about it being translated and made available to even larger audiences?

Here are some excerpts from the interview with Mr. Neugroschel.

Interview with Joachim Neugroschel

EG Do you read a whole work before translating? Do you translate the words literally?

JN I never read a book before translating it. No reason to. I do not translate the words literally. Only a bad translator would translate literally.

EG In order to not write a literal translation, don't you have to have a sense of an author and their work? How do you capture that uniqueness of an author and transfer it to another language?

JN You don't have to have a sense of the author's work to translate. I read a page and get the style. It is a question of music and rhythm. It is like being an actor. An actor can take on different roles. A translator takes on different roles.

EG Does anyone go over your translations before publication?

JN Yes, often a copy editor. One copy editor changed the words spiral crack to spinal crack. If you get hit in a certain way the crack is spiral.

EG How do you recognize a good translation?

JN Just read it. Grammatical blunders are a clue. Example: when it comes to adverbs, first you have place and then time.

“I went to school yesterday.” To school is an adverbial phrase of place. Yesterday is an adverb of time. This is correct usage. A phrase such as, “I'm going tomorrow to school,” is bad grammar. Poor grammar is obvious in bad translations.

EG You are taking a little of the mystery of translation away. I don't speak a foreign language; thinking about the art of translation is new to me.

JN If you don't know a foreign language, you can only judge a translation by its use of English. Think about this. Most of the books you've read are translations.

EG I never thought of that. When you think of it you are not getting the direct voice of the author. What if Kafka was around today and he knew English, what would he think of your translation of "Metamorphosis"?

JN He would find it excellent. I've captured the flavor and the quivering of his voice. He would be very grateful to me.

Differences Between Swedish and American Literature

In the past few posts, translator Ken Schubert shared some of his ideas about translation and translators with us. While talking to him about literary translation, he mentioned an interesting view on the differences between Swedish and American literature and film.

KS: Breaking into the Swedish-English literary market is very difficult. Only a handful of books are commissioned each year by a British or American publisher for translation. If you manage to land one of those jobs, you'll get paid, but it's not enough to live on.

BJE: Why do you think there is so little interest in books from Scandinavia, or in translated literature in general? Are Americans against translated work (lack of interest in foreign cultures, etc) or do they simply have enough writing there as it is?

KS: Beyond the fact that people would rather read non-translated works (for good reason) and there is an enormous output of literature in the US, I think Americans would generally be put off by the more complex and less identifiable plots in Swedish fiction. Plus Swedish authors are not as well edited as American authors, so it's more difficult to maintain a consistent voice.

BJE: In regard to "the more complex and less identifiable plots in Swedish fiction" – you apparently see a major difference between Swedish and American (English too, perhaps?) literature. Can you name some examples of this? Or offer a theory of why this is? Also, why is there less editing in Sweden?

KS: In recent years, I've been more a student of Swedish film than literature, so I can talk about that more easily. Swedish film, regardless of quality otherwise, is most often based on a psychological issue. The plot is secondary. A good example are the Martin Beck police films, which aren't even considered particularly artistic. What you always remember about them is the interactions between the main characters and what is going on in their own minds and lives in relation to the particular crime. If a policeman is investigating domestic violence, his own past relationships with women come up, etc. When it comes to editing, I think it's the same phenomenon that we face as translators of business texts. Swedish workplaces are more decentralized than in the Anglo-Saxon world, so there is often not someone with ultimate responsibility for individual tasks.

BJE: So, to be extremely general and stereotypical, I can summarize what you just said as American films are more about action and Swedish films about thinking, and this is perhaps true of literature, too. Do you have any theories about why this difference might have arisen?

KS: I don't know that much about American films anymore, but having grown up in America, competition and individual achievement are key cultural values. In that context, action is a more natural expression of those values. Sweden is more of a collective, consensus-based culture, so that the more general psychological sources of agreement and conflict among people become more relevant.

What do other translators think about this? Are there similarly pronounced differences between the U.S. (or other English-speaking cultures) and other countries?

If there are such differences, shouldn’t there to be more translated literature, rather than less, so that readers (or film viewers) can learn about another culture?

Let me know what you think about this interesting topic.

An Interview with Ken Schubert Continued: On Advice for New Translators

The conversation with translator Ken Schubert
is continued.

BJE: If you could describe the ideal translator, what qualities/background/experiences/education would s/he have?

KS: I think the ideal translator would have as broad a background as possible, love the process of translation and be particularly attuned to nuances in his or her native language. I also think that the ideal translator would have the ability to comprehend a text as a whole and to maintain a single voice (even when the source text fails to do so – unless it's intentional, of course).

BJE: I wonder if you have any general advice/comments for new translators. How can they find jobs? Where do they look? What should they keep in mind while translating? What do you like most about translating?

KS: Probably the best ways for new translators to find jobs is to stay in touch with other translators through a translator's association and to contact lots of agencies. That will provide you with the experience and contacts to find direct customers. Customers will start coming to you after a while based on recommendations from other translators and customers. Advertising is generally too expensive and ineffective. Beyond what I've talked about, probably the most important thing to keep in mind is accuracy and neatness. Double check all names and numbers and make sure that you haven't inadvertently missed some of the source text. No matter how good your translation is, the customer will tend to overlook it if you make sloppy mistakes. Run a spell check on the final translation no matter how long it takes. Use Internet search engines as much as possible, but don't believe everything you see there and make sure you understand how the search engines work. I also recommend using a translation tool like Trados or Deja Vu. That creates an easily accessible database of your previous translations and helps structure individual assignments. A text looks a lot less daunting when you can use a translation tool to break it down into its constituent parts. And perhaps the most important thing is to be professional with your customers – be firm about your sense of what translation is all about, but always be willing to discuss what you've done and make appropriate changes.

BJE: Ken, thank you very much for your thoughtful answers and for being so generous with your time and experience.

An Interview with Ken Schubert Continued: On Being Literal

The conversation with translator Ken Schubert is continued.

BJE: On your website, you write, "In fact, many everyday expressions are not conducive to a direct translation, but require a creative effort on the part of the translator to convey their true sense." Do you have any examples of such expressions?

KS: There are thousands of examples of everyday expressions that can't be translated directly. The first one that came to mind when you asked the question was "det gäller att." One of my favorite translations is "the trick is to," but of course it's not applicable in most cases. One good approach is to leave the phrase out completely in English.

BJE: Leaving the phrase out completely can be a good solution, but do you ever have clients complain because they feel you haven't been literal enough? How closely do you usually follow a text?

KS: I've had very few complaints about lack of literalness. I generally follow the Swedish text sentence by sentence, though I might combine two sentences or make one sentence into two. Beyond that, I am extremely un-literal in terms of sentence structure or the individual words used. I try to translate technical terms literally, but otherwise I try to ignore the particular word and sentence structure used in Swedish and get to what is being said instead.

BJE: About literalness, that is often a problem new translators have. They are afraid of deviating too much from the text. They feel that being faithful to the text means being completely faithful to each word, each way of saying things, etc. Then they end up with problems where their translation sounds forced and foreign. What advice to you have to them, or to any translator who can't quite let go, as it were?

KS: I think each translator has to develop an approach that feels best to them. At one point early in my career, I would translate the entire text fairly quickly and then spend a lot of time modifying it later. Now I generally spend a good deal of time on each sentence initially and make minimal changes later. The first approach was based on a fairly literal translation that gradually became less literal with each modification. The second approach is based on trying to grasp the meaning of the sentence the first time without getting hung up on the words. The second approach has become natural for me now, but it's still more time-consuming and arduous than a literal approach. So it requires a lot of patience and dedication to what you're doing. Customers won't necessarily notice the difference. And as much as I like my approach, the most important thing is consistency and remaining loyal to the source text, however you define loyalty. I don't like translation that gratuitously adds or subtracts something just because it feels good. For me, anything you "change" has to be because you think it more accurately reflects what is meant by the source text or because it is "what would be said" in a corresponding situation in English.

BJE: Your comment on literalness reminds me of something on your website. You wrote, "Far more than a collection of symbols, a language is a dynamic, complex structure – an organism – that survives and evolves through a constant interplay between the whole and the parts." Can you expand on your perspective on language and translation?

KS: Without going into a long exposition on language, I'll just say that the structure of a language tends to determine the words that are used and not vice versa. That's why a 4-year-old child understands most of what is being said, not because their vocabulary is so large but because they've grasped the essence of the structure. I actually experimented with that when learning French over the past few years. I listened to French radio for a couple of years without looking up a single word. Although I couldn't have repeated literally what was being said, I understood the essence of what was being talked about. For translators, that means that the sentence structure or flow of logic in the Swedish text may not correspond to what works in English. Of course, we're fairly limited by the fact that we usually can't move sentences around between paragraphs. Sometimes it's necessary though. One common difference between English and Swedish is that English tends to present the most vital information about a phenomenon the first time it's mentioned, whereas Swedish will present it gradually. A tiny example I ran across today went something like, "XX is a very useful tool for researchers. This database has been in use for many years..." In English, you would say, "The XX database is a very useful tool for researchers...."

BJE: When you say "structure" could you be specific about what you mean? How much freedom can/should translators take with structure?

KS: I was using structure to refer to a particular language as an organism that follows certain principles. As native speakers, we may not be conscious of the principles, but we formulate our words and sentences in accordance with them. The principles of a foreign language may be more obvious to us. One of my main tasks as a translator as I see it is to allow the way that English generates words and phrases to inform my translation. Of course, I'm limited to a certain extent by the need to express a particular thought from the Swedish text, even if the thought isn't "English" in nature or would naturally appear in another part of the text in English. So you have to make compromises as a translator. But again, I don't think that translators should take any "freedom" with structure. They should look for the structure that best reflects what is meant in Swedish and that is most natural in English, given the constraints they are working under. In other words, the non-literal approach is actually more rigorous than the literal approach because your ideal is "how would an English writer express themselves in this specific situation."

BJE: Yes, and that is what is so challenging. Sometimes a translator can get so caught up in the way something is said in Swedish (or whatever the source language is), that it is difficult to figure out how an English writer would have said it. You have to be creative and you have to keep your native language (the target language) fresh, so it still feels natural to you.

KS: I have to say that translation never truly becomes easy if you take it seriously, because it poses new challenges at each step along the way. And you're still faced by the impossibility of truly capturing the entire meaning of the original. Frequently a translation is "better" than the original in terms of being more understandable conceptually, but it never fully captures the full spontaneity of the way we speak our native languages.

This conversation will be continued in the next post.

An Interview with Ken Schubert: On Relating Translation to Your Own Life

Recently, I had the chance to discuss translation with translator Ken Schubert. In the next few posts, I’ll include pieces from our conversation.Mr. Schubert, who is originally from the Chicago area, moved to Sweden in 1992. Please see his website
for more information about him and his services.

Brett Jocelyn Epstein: Ken, you started your career as a teacher, and have also been a computer programmer, copy writer, and court assistant. How did you get into translation and how do your other background experiences help you as a translator?

Ken Schubert: I started translating informally soon after I came to Sweden. It seemed the natural thing to do since I've always had a flair for writing. But I actually started doing it professionally as a means to get a work permit – I had been a student up that point, and that doesn't allow you to stay in Sweden long-term.
The key to being a good translator is to have a broad experience of life, both personally and professionally. For most of the texts I get, I can say "Been there, done that..." in one sense or another. It makes a big difference.

BJE: If you think "the key to being a good translator is to have a broad experience of life, both personally and professionally," what does that suggest for young translators who are just starting out?

KS: I'd say that they should focus on the kinds of texts that they can relate to in terms of their own lives and try to read widely and experience other areas. On the other hand, most of us have a vast reservoir of knowledge about many different areas by the time we've reached our late teens. Perhaps I should modify my original statement and say that the key to being a good translator is the ability to relate the text you're translating to your own experience, direct or indirect. If you stop to think about it, you're likely to find that you know a lot more about the subject, at least the essence of what it's about, than you give yourself credit for. Or maybe this has to do with the importance of approaching a text from a comprehensive understanding.

BJE: You've translated literary works as well as more technical documents, such as financial reports and contracts. What kinds of documents do you prefer to translate and why? What sort of translation do you find most challenging? And, to bring all this back to your last comment, how do feel you relate the texts you work on to your own experiences?

KS: There's a thrill to translating literary works. But I never managed to have any of them published, with the exception of a story in an anthology recently. So I wouldn't translate a literary work again unless I knew it was going to be published. Generally the satisfaction of translation is connected with knowing that somebody is going to read and benefit from it. Based on that, I'll take the rather radical position that all kinds of texts are equally challenging and satisfying. Often you have the same opportunity for creativity in an annual report or a letter from the Social Insurance Administration as you do in a novel. In neither case am I talking about creativity in terms of inventing something, but rather in finding ways to reflect the text you are translating in the deepest and most natural way. A phrase might be brilliant in an annual report and lousy in a novel, or vice versa – the challenge in either case is to establish a voice that conveys the spirit of the original and stick to it. As far as relating to my own experience, an annual report is generally about a company that sells a product or service that you have used or seen someone else use – in other words, it's about the everyday world. Of course, that's even more obvious in a novel, which is generally based on universal human experiences.

BJE: Many people find it very difficult, at least initially, to translate contracts, annual reports, instruction manuals, or other such technical documents. They may be experts in terms of the languages involved, and they may even have studied some technical subjects, but it is hard for them to, as you say, relate the texts to their own experiences. Do you have advice for them? Should they look at translation in a different way?

KS: One of the few things I never translate is instruction manuals, and that's probably because I'm lousy at reading them myself. The reason I like contracts and annual reports is that I can easily relate them to the everyday world. Another reason I'm good at contracts is that they are very logical, and I have a logical mind – I majored in math in college. So I would say that people who don't have that bent might want to avoid contracts. But I think that annual reports should be easily relatable for most translators once they get past the misconception that the reports are difficult or unusual in some way.

BJE: I absolutely agree that non-fiction, such as contracts or reports, can be creative and stimulating to work on. There is a thrill in finding the right words and make the text available to a wider audience.

This conversation will be continued in the next post.

An Interview with Brett

To continue looking at the basic questions of what translation is and who and what a translator is, I’m posting an interview with me that was published in “The Practicing Writer” in 2004. “The Practicing Writer” is a free monthly e-newsletter and website run by Erika Dreifus; it’s full of interesting and helpful information for writers.

The Translator's Practice: An Interview With Brett Jocelyn Epstein by Erika Dreifus

This month “The Practicing Writer” considers an aspect of the craft and business of writing that many of us don't necessarily think about every day: translation. What does a translator do? What are the ties between writing and translation? And where can we learn more? In an interview with Erika Dreifus, Brett Jocelyn Epstein shares insights on these essential elements of the translator's craft and business.

Erika Dreifus: Brett, can you briefly describe the job of a translator?

Brett Jocelyn Epstein: Translation is the art and craft of bringing an author's actual words, as well as his ideas, implications, moods, voice, style, and so forth, from the source language (the language to be translated from) to the target language (the language to be translated to), without being either overly literal and strict with the text or overly free and loose. A translator must consider what and how would the author have written this document if he were writing in the target language. So, translation is the delicate and formidable job of perfectly recreating the author's original document.

ED: What kinds of business opportunities are open to translators?

BJE: The great majority of translators support themselves with non-fiction work. My partner, Daniel Elander, and I mainly translate articles, websites, business documents, and menus from Swedish to English, though we've also worked with Danish. Translating legal documents, articles, reference works, textbooks, websites, and other such items unfortunately pays better and is much easier to get into than translating poetry, plays, or novels. I personally feel that translating creative work is more challenging and more interesting, but since only approximately two percent of all literature published in the United States is in translation (and the translations that do exist come primarily from Spanish, French, or German), it is clear that there is little work available for people who want to translate novels or poems. Most people who do this work don't do so because they want to make money (translating literature is far from lucrative), but rather because they are dedicated to literature and/or to the specific author or work and because they want the intellectual and creative challenge.

ED: In a recent article, you issued a call for more people to “join the ranks of translators.” In what ways may practicing writers be particularly suited to the work of translating texts?

BJE: I really do think that writers are the ideal people to be translators. To translate a text, you must understand it fully and be able to basically rewrite it in a new language. Clearly, then, it helps if a translator has experience with writing, the writing process, analyzing literature, and editing. Certainly there are good translators out there who do not work on their own original writing and likewise there are good writers who don't have the patience for or interest in working with other people's documents, but in general, I believe translating and writing are worthy and compatible mates and I find both that reading, analyzing, and translating texts has benefited my own writing and also that writing stories and articles has helped me better understand the English language and how to translate into it.

ED: What works “on translating” would you recommend for anyone interested in learning more on the topic?

BJE: One of the best ways, I think, to learn about translation is to carefully read and study a document in both its original language and its translation. When I did this with Pär Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf, I spent a lot of time trying to understand what words and phrases really meant and why the translator had made certain choices and I compared this to what I would have done, had I been the translator. In fact, I realized that I was not satisfied at all with the English translation and I hope that one day soon a publishing company will decide to issue a new version of this novel. As for actual works on translation, I have particularly enjoyed and learned from Vladimir Nabokov's essay “The Art of Translation,” William Weaver's essay “The Process of Translation” (which can be found in an interesting volume called The Craft of Translation, edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte), and Performing Without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation by Robert Wechsler.

ED: Thank you, Brett!

This interview is from the November 2004 issue of “The Practicing Writer” newsletter. Erika Dreifus is a writer, teacher, and the editor of “The Practicing Writer.” Please see http://www.practicing-writer.com/ for more information.

I hope in the future to include interviews with other translators in this blog; if you have questions you’d like to ask a translator, or if you are a translator and would like to be interviewed, let me know.