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.

Taking a Break

In the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a break from work, and that also means that I’ll be posting less frequently. But I’ll still put up new material, so do check back!

Sample Codes of Ethics

Just to go back briefly to the codes of ethics topic, here are a few sample codes that some translators’ associations have. I’ve looked at codes from a pretty interesting variety of groups.

American Translators Association

The National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators

The Association of Translators and Interpreters of Nova Scotia

Sveriges Facköversättarförening (Look under “Nyheter” at “God yrkessed,” if you can read Swedish)

Nearly all the codes I’ve seen emphasize that translators need to have good skills, not accept work that is beyond their abilities, keep information about clients and customers confidential, be accurate, and make other such expected suggestions. Only the ATA has any sort of code for clients and their guidelines are worth repeating:

“A. I will put my contractual relationship with translators and interpreters in writing and state my expectations prior to work.

“B. I will adhere to agreed terms, payment schedules, and agreed changes, and will not capriciously change job descriptions after work has begun.

“C. I will deal directly with the translator or interpreter about any dispute. If we cannot resolve a dispute, we will seek arbitration.

“D. I will not require translators or interpreters to do unpaid work for the prospect of a paid assignment.

“E. I will not use translators' or interpreters' credentials in bidding or promoting my business without their consent or without the bona fide intention to use their services.

“F. For translations for publication or performance over which I have direct control, I will give translators recognition traditionally given authors.”

It is important to note that even if some translation agencies join translators’ associations and follow these rules, the great majority of a translator’s clients are not members (unless said translator only works for agencies that are corporate members, though not all, or even most, agencies join such associations) and thus are not aware of these codes, nor feel bound to them. So the question remains for how to better educate clients and/or to only work for clients who treat their translators with the respect they deserve.

Car Doesn’t Run? Try Translation!

The last post was on internationalization and I mentioned advertising as something that needs to be carefully translated. I heard about an example of bad advertising translation in regard to Coca-Cola. The soda company tried to translate its “Coke adds life” ad to Japanese and ended up with “Coke brings your ancestors back from the dead.” Slight difference there!

Careful translation isn’t just limited to ads, but also affects product names and the instructions for using said products. A well-known example is the Chevrolet Nova car, which didn’t sell well in Mexico, since “no va” means “it doesn’t go.” Bill Bryson featured a funny example of poorly translated instructions in his book “The Mother Tongue.” On a package of Italian food, he found, “Besmear a backing pan, previously buttered with a good tomato sauce, and, after, dispose the cannelloni, lightly distanced between them in an only couch.”

A Wall Street Journal article on the importance of translation and adaption offers the following statistics from a survey done by a translation company a few years ago: “Close to 50% simply tune out the message of an ad if it is poorly translated. About 65% said bad translations show a lack of caring about the consumer, while nearly a third said it would hinder their loyalty to a product.”

A company can’t afford to waste time, effort, and money on mistranslations. Consumers may laugh at bad translations of ads, product names, or instructions, but the real question is whether they ultimately will avoid the company’s products. Mistranslation simply “doesn’t go.”

Internationalization

In today’s A Word A Day e-newsletter, Wordsmith Anu Garg focused on the word “internationalization.” He offers two definitions:

“1. The act or process of making something international or placing
it under international control.

“2. Making a product or process suitable for use around the globe.”

Something too many companies don’t recognize is that translation is an important part of internationalization, especially in terms of the second definition. Making something suitable for use in another country is not “just replacing error messages from a new language,” as Mr. Garg refers to the process of making a computer program internationalized. Rather, it involves understanding the culture behind the language, and adjusting the language usage to that.

When I taught some English courses at a Swedish advertising agency, I was surprised when some of the students happened to mention that ads they made for the Swedish market had to be significantly changed for the Finnish market. Finland and Sweden were geographically so close, I thought, and Finland was historically influenced by Sweden and even had Swedish-speaking populations, so I didn’t see why the ads wouldn’t work there. But as a translator, I soon realized that this made sense. Finland’s culture is not the same as Sweden’s and even if the countries share some history and some similarities, a Swedish company that assumed it didn’t have to adapt its ads to Finland, or even translate them to Finnish, was not being respectful of its market, and would perhaps not do much business there.

Besides understanding the target market, which some companies have even started employing anthropologists for, a company interested in internationalization has to hire skilled translators as well. But the sheer number of poorly translated products, instructions, and ads, some featured on Jay Leno’s “Headlines” segment each week, makes it clear that many companies around the world haven’t quite figured out just what internationalization means yet. Hopefully they got Mr. Garg’s message today.

Virginia Woolf on Translating Humor

In "The Common Reader," Virginia Woolf wrote that "humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue."

As I said in the last post, translating humor is difficult, but apparently Ms. Woolf was not hopeful about a translator's ability to accomplish this hard task.

Translating Humor

Ethics is an important subject, and one we’ll come back to, but for a total change of pace, here is an article I noticed about translating comedy.

Humor is especially tricky to translate not only because different people and different cultures find different things funny, but also because of the fact that languages work in different ways. As the author of the article points out, English vocabulary and grammar “allow for endlessly amusing confusions of meanings.” For example, it is easy to play around with “tale” and “tail” in English and to make a joke based on how the two words sound the same but have different meanings, but such a joke wouldn’t work in Swedish (or in many other languages), as the Swedish translations for those words are not so similar. Incidentally, this sort of linguistic complexity, or confusion, depending on your point of view, is one reason so many people find it difficult to learn English, especially in terms of spelling and pronunciation.

Word play and humor add so much to a text and sometimes can be truly essential to the story or document, but they are incredibly difficult to translate well. When it comes to translating humor, there are three main choices. A translator can leave a joke or word play out entirely, which then of course may affect the meaning of the work and/or cause other changes to have to be made to the text. Or a translator can retain the joke but translate it literally, so the humor is lost but the words are retained. A footnote could possibly be added here to explain what the joke means in the source language, especially if the humor is important to the text and to the reader’s understanding of it. Finally, a translator can adapt it to the target language, creating a somewhat similar atmosphere or sense. Obviously, a translator has to make such a decision on a case by case basis and there is no simple rule for how to deal with these kinds of situations.

Codes of Ethics

To continue the discussion on ethics, let’s look at translators’ associations’ codes of ethics.

Many translators’ associations do have codes of ethics or recommendations for professional conduct, but often such rules are rather basic. Such codes might say that translators should only translate to their native languages, or that they should be certain that they possess the necessary knowledge (such as specific terminology) before they accept an assignment, or that they should protect the customer by not using the text to be translated, the client’s personal information, or any other details in any way that does not strictly have to do with the job. But these kinds of codes or rules, which deal mainly with practical issues and are thus helpful in that regard, generally leave out two important topics.

First, they give no advice or suggestions on what translators should do if they face ethically risky situations. For example, what should a translator do if asked to translate a text that is specifically supposed to show the client’s language skills? Maybe a client is applying for a job in France and has to be fluent in French but instead writes his application essay in English and asks a translator to translate it to French. Is that ethical? Some translators might argue that such a client is only hurting himself by misrepresenting his language skills and that it is not up to them to point this out to him, whereas others might feel that they have a responsibility to turn down the job. To take a more serious example, what should a translator do with a racist text? Some translators might say they have a duty to make all texts available in other languages while others might refuse to translate a racist document, claiming that it incites people to hatred and possibly violence. Codes of ethics are, unfortunately, basically silent about these very important issues.

The second major topic left out of codes of ethics is the role of the client. If translators are expected to follow rules, why shouldn’t their clients? Too often I hear stories – or experience such things myself – about customers who try to cheat translators by not paying the correct amount, or not paying on time, or who expect translators to do more than is actually the job of a translator. Some codes do have recommendations for employers of translators, but these recommendations are generally rather basic as well, and they're not that common anyway. Many translators’ associations have corporate members and it would make sense to have ethical rules that these agencies and companies need to uphold. Then, if they do not follow the rules, they can be fined, or removed from the association, or translators can be warned about them (there should be similar consequences for translators who do not follow their ethical codes, too). Too often, corporate clients take advantage of translators and this must change. I suspect that some clients simply don’t understand translation and therefore don’t know how to work with translators, so having regulations or advice for them would educate them and help both them and the translators who work for them.

While I think it is great that translators’ associations have some advice on ethics and other information on professional conduct, I also think these codes are too limited and need to be further developed.

Translators and Ethics

I’m going away for a few days again, so I thought I’d leave you with an important issue to think about – ethics.

What is a translator’s ethical role? Should translators simply translate whatever a customer gives us? Is it our job to simply make all texts available in other languages? Or do we have an obligation to speak up if we disagree with something or if we are concerned about the affect the translation might have on the audience?

Every week, in the New York Times Magazine, a man named Randy Cohen answers questions on ethical issue. I enjoy his column, which is called The Ethicist, and was happy to see a question on interpretation last Sunday.

Someone asked:

“Some time ago I was working as a court interpreter, translating what is said in court for the defendant and what the defendant says for the court. During a recess, the defendant confided that he did commit the crime and intended to take the stand and lie about it. I sought the advice of a colleague, who then informed the judge. As a result, I was chastised and lost my job. Was I wrong to divulge this information? E.N., Seattle”

Mr. Cohen responded:

“You were. Even if you made no explicit pledge of confidentiality, your role as an interpreter invites the defendant to confide in you, a relationship that does not terminate during a recess, out in the hall by the doughnut cart.

“The connection you've cultivated — emotionally, psychologically — endures. Unless you cautioned the defendant that you might disclose what he said, you abused his trust and your position.

“Robin G. Steinberg, executive director of the Bronx Defenders, a public defenders' organization in the Bronx (well, they would be), says of interpreters: "They become the only bridge between the attorney and the client. Those confidential communications can only occur with the interpreter, and those conversations are, indeed, confidential. There would be absolutely no way for a client to know that communications s/he makes just to the interpreter are subject to disclosure."

“Steinberg is right. A defendant naturally sees you as a quasi member of his legal team, someone to whom he can speak freely. Moreover, his requiring an interpreter indicates that he has limited facility with English and so is isolated in the court setting, making him even more apt to be candid with someone who speaks his language.

“What you could have done was speak to the defendant's lawyer. Generally, in the United States, if a client baldly announces an intention to lie on the stand, his lawyer is ethically bound to prevent him. Here in New York State, if a lawyer is unable to do that, he or she may, but is not required to, speak to the judge.

“While you acted badly, your colleague acted worse, imperiling the defendant and betraying your trust. I'm surprised that the judge spared him a sound thrashing, if that remedy is available under Seattle law.”


What do other translators and interpreters think of Mr. Cohen’s opinion? Do you agree with his view?

Have there been translation assignments you have refused to take or are there jobs you can imagine turning down for ethical reasons? I’d be very interested to hear other translators’ opinions on and experiences with ethical issues.

Selling Your Services and Negotiating

At the conference I attended last weekend, Ulla-Lisa Thordén gave an enthusiastic, energetic talk about selling your services.

She started off by mentioning two myths about selling. The first myth is that you have to be a born seller. Ms. Thordén said that you aren’t born anything; you have to become something, and being a good seller is really just being good at speaking and good at listening, both of which are skills that can be learned. The second myth she mentioned is that quality sells itself. Ms. Thordén said that unfortunately, quality has to be sold, and translators need to be able to explain what their particular abilities and skills are and why they are different from those of all the other translators out there.

Based on what she said, the two secrets of marketing and selling are persistence and clarity. You have to be persistent and keep trying to reach people, keep telling your family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and whoever else about what you do and why you are good at it, and keep in touch with the customers you do have and be available for them. You also have to be clear about what you do and you should spend time thinking about exactly what you are good at (as has come up in other posts, specialization can make you stand out from other translators and can add to your credibility). You should also be able to explain to customers what you can do for them and why they should work with you. Remember that people are easily overwhelmed by information, so being succinct and clear about your services is very beneficial.

Selling your services and negotiating prices are two related areas that are often difficult for translators, and Ms. Thordén also gave some advice on negotiation. Few translators, or other freelancers, want to argue with customers about price. We want to be friendly and liked by our customers, so when they complain about the cost, many of us get nervous or scared and try to appease them by hurriedly offering discounts or agreeing to lower the price. Ms. Thordén doesn’t agree with this approach.

Customers always think translators are too expensive (part of this may be because they don’t understand what translation really is or why it is necessary, so they don’t like paying for it, and also, of course, it is natural that companies want to keep their costs down). When faced with this situation, a translator should be clear and simply explain why his services are valuable. If clients complain, take control of the conversation. Either sit there quietly while the customer talks, which admittedly is quite difficult to do, or else say something such as, “I hear that you are hesitant. Why?” Respond calmly and clearly to whatever concerns the customer brings up, again explaining what you can do for him and his company, If the customer still doesn’t want to pay, say, “It’s too bad you can’t afford me.” Don’t lower your price just because others are good at negotiating or complaining; you should only lower the cost if it is strategically important for you to do so. Make sure you have decided in advance how much you are worth and what the absolute lowest price you will take for the project is.

And, finally, though it may sound obvious, when the assignment is finished, thank the customer. Say, “Thank you for choosing me” or “Thank you for working with me.” Being polite never hurts and it usually helps!

In other words, be clear about what you do and why you are good at it, and be able to explain this to others firmly and politely.

Cost and Effectiveness

Two of the lectures at the conference that I enjoyed the most might be considered basic, but they offered advice that I think is useful for both new and more experienced translators.

Björn Olofsson started his seminar with the premise that there are translation jobs available, but the question is how customers can find the translators they need. Mr. Olofsson said that when trying to reach customers, translators should think about cost and effectiveness. For example, having an ad in the yellow pages is expensive and generally doesn’t help that much, while being a member of a translators’ association is one of the best tools available to translators. Membership is relatively expensive, but also quite effective, since most associations have databases where customers can find you and the association also serves as a credential for translators.

Having your own website is generally pretty cheap and is a good way to sell your services. Here, though, it is important that the first page of your site clearly shows what you do, what you offer, and what you are good at. Customers don’t have the time to go searching for this information. Mr. Olofsson also thinks your website should primarily be in the source language and since generally the source language is not a translator’s mother tongue, make sure you get someone to edit and review the text. Language is your job, after all, and if you have any grammar or spelling mistakes on your website, customers will not trust your language skills and will not hire you. Mr. Olofsson’s website is only in Swedish, but it exemplifies a clear site with easy-to-find information.

Mr. Olofsson also mentioned the importance of specialization, an issue that came up several times during the conference. Many people can translate general texts, so specializing, whether in financial reports, contracts, users’ manuals, medical documents, or whatever else, is a way to help you stand out among all the translators. It also helps customers find you and I believe it builds trust as well; someone who claims to be good at everything is not so believable, but someone who says that she works primarily with dental texts and turns down legal documents because she doesn’t think she provide a high enough level of quality and service is someone companies would be more likely to hire. If you specialize and are asked to take on a translation outside your field, provide service to your customers by finding someone else to do the job or recommending a translators’ association and its database.

In other words, Mr. Olofsson's tips are to think about cost versus effectiveness when marketing your services, have a good website, and specialize.

For more on selling your services, which was the subject of the other lecture I mentioned above, see the next post.

Back from the Conference

Well, I’ve returned from the SFÖ conference in Stenungssund now. I enjoyed the lectures and got to meet many people, and since my goals for such an event are making contacts and learning new things, I can say the conference was a success. There were seminars on everything from EU documents to insurance, from searching on the Internet to copyright, and lectures ranging from how to better sell your services to social skills, and from drug slang to workplace ergonomics. In the next posts, I’ll write specifically about some of the lectures, but in the meantime, here are some photographs from Stenungssund.

Off to the Conference

I’m off to the annual conference of the Sveriges Facköversättarförening/Swedish Association of Professional Translators. I’ll be sure to report on the conference when I get back!

Archive by Category

I've organized all my past posts by category now, so it should be easy to find information on whatever translation-related topic you are interested in. The current categories are: translation and translators (these posts are explorations of what translation is and what it means to be a translator), practical advice (how to find jobs, for example), education (how to become a translator and what sort of education is needed), literary, poetry, interviews (currently there's only an interview with me, but more interviews will be coming soon), articles, book reviews and other posts on books, and polls. You can find the organized archive on the left side of the page, below the links.

Links for the Four Steps

In the last post, I detailed four steps to take in order to find more translating jobs. Now I’ll list some links you may find helpful. This is far from a complete list, however, so make sure you do more research on your own.

A very good general resource is A Translator’s Home Companion. This site has comprehensive listings, including of agencies and other places to find jobs.

Another good resource is translator Cecilia Falk’s page.

1. Sign up for e-lists.

Jobs for Freelance Translators

Translation and Interpretation Jobs

LANTRA

Literary Translation

2. Join a professional organization, preferably a translators’ society.

American Translators Association

International Federation of Translators

American Literary Translators Association

The Translators and Interpreters Guild

Institute of Translation and Interpreting

Sveriges Facköversättarförening/Swedish Association of Professional Translators

Föreningen Auktoriserade Translatorer/Federation of Authorized Translators

3. Register with translation agencies.

There are too many agencies to list here, but the following link and the two links I mentioned first have their own lists, plus you can do an easy internet search by entering your languages and the words “translation agency.”

Translators Café

4. Talk.

I can’t help you with links here! But I can remind you to tell people that you are a translator and I suggest you add a signature with that information to all your outgoing e-mails.

If you find any other good links, let me know!

Four First Steps

Some new translators have contacted me and asked me for advice on finding translation jobs. There are, of course, many ways of going about this, but here are a few simple first steps translators might want to take. All four suggestions focus on making contacts, which is an essential part of any business.

1. Sign up for e-lists.

This is the simplest step to take and is a good way to begin. There are many free mailing lists on translation; some require that you be a member of a translators’ association, but others accept anyone interested in translation. E-lists are good places to meet other translators and find jobs.

On such lists, people ask for and offer advice, talk about career options, mention which agencies don’t pay on time, discuss invoicing, ask specific questions about terminology, and so forth. Also, people sometimes realize they've accepted more work than they can actually finish on time, so they offer sub-contracted assignments, and that is a good way to get some experience. I have found that many people get work from other translators, especially in the beginning, so clearly, getting to know other translators is important for many reasons.

Thus, I suggest you join some list serves related to your languages. If you introduce yourself as being a new translator, I am certain people will offer advice, help, encouragement, and maybe even assignments. Experienced translators also find such lists helpful. Even if you've worked as a translator for many years, you might still have questions or need support.

2. Join a professional organization, preferably a translators’ society.

While there are some translator programs and translator certifications, the majority of freelance translators work without having studied to become translators and without having received an official certification. Partly because of this, customers don’t always know how to find a translator they can really rely on. The major translators’ associations are professional groups with entry requirements and standards that they uphold. Customers, therefore, might prefer to hire translators who are members of such groups, and they also use association databases to find translators who have the background they are looking for. Thus, being a member could very well bring you more work. I have certainly found that being a member of Sveriges Facköversättarförening/Swedish Association of Professional Translators (SFÖ) has helped customers find me and that the credential is viewed positively.

Such associations also provide translators with a large network, just as the e-lists do. Through SFÖ and its e-mail list, I have met other translators who sometimes had too much work and then passed on assignments to me, as well as translators who have been able to answer specific terminology questions I’ve had. Just this week, a translator who has different specialty areas than I do spent some time answering a few questions I had on a translation that was more in her field than in fields I typically work with. I hope that I’ll be able to help her in turn at some point. In general, the people in the group willingly share their experience and knowledge and since freelancers often work alone, having a network of people who can help you when needed is definitely appreciated.

Many associations have interesting magazines, gatherings, and annual conferences as well, all of which help you make contacts and develop professionally. In fact, I’m looking forward to attending SFÖ’s conference in just a few days.

One problem beginning translators have is that professional organizations often expect you to have references when you apply to join. If you’re just starting out, you probably haven’t had enough customers yet to be able to meet the reference requirement. That’s why I suggest joining e-lists first, as I think you’ll be able to find a few assignments that way, especially by sub-contracting from other translators. Another complaint people have about professional organizations is that the membership fees are often high. I know I resisted joining SFÖ for awhile for just this reason, but I have earned back my annual fee many times from the work I’ve gotten through the group. Sometimes you have to spend money in order to earn money!

3. Register with translation agencies.

Finding direct clients can be difficult, so many people start off translating for agencies, and plenty of translators continue to work primarily with agencies even when they are more settled in their career.

A quick search on the internet will help you find agencies that work with your language pairs and then you can fill out the form many of them have on their websites. However, some agencies only want certified translators, or translators who use specific computer translation programs, or translators who work with particular subjects, so make sure you study their websites carefully before filling in the form.

Also, most of the agencies will want you to name your price right away, so you might want to think carefully about how much you'll charge. Remember when mentioning a figure that the bottom line is often the deciding factor when agencies pick which translators to hire and also keep in mind that agencies generally pay less than direct customers.

4. Talk.

Tell anyone and everyone that you work as a translator, and keep active so you meet many people. You never know who might need your services, or who might mention to someone else who happens to need a translator that you work as one. You might be surprised by how many people start sending you job announcements or ads from newspapers or websites or whatever else, or who pass on information about you to potential customers. Among other things, friends have noticed ads looking for translators and sent those ads on to me; I have gotten work thanks to the sharp eyes of these friends.

Besides translation, I also teach English, write articles, and copy edit, so I meet people in other fields. Some of my adult students work at companies where they need to translate their website or invoices to English, and schools where I teach sometimes need to translate evaluations or letters, and I meet people through my work as a freelance journalist and find they want someone to translate their restaurant's menus, and so forth. For me, having several jobs, meeting many people, and telling friends and relatives about my work helps me find a lot of opportunities.

Of course, it’s especially helpful if you live in a country where the language you want to translate from is spoken. Since I live in Sweden and translate from Swedish, I meet people frequently who need help translating from Swedish. But translation is a job that you can do from any location, so you don’t have to move somewhere just to get work! Instead, join lists and professional organizations, sign up with agencies, and let people know that you are a translator. Those are good steps to take no matter what stage you are at in your career.

Urgently Needed

A brief recent New York Times article on translation and the job market says that there is more need for translators now and that it can be a profitable job (the article only talks about non-fiction translations, such as government documents, and not at all about literary translation, which is why the author can even mention the idea of profitability).

It is nice to see translation highlighted in a major newspaper (usually, if it is mentioned at all, it is only given a cursory sentence in a book review), even if the article seems to focus on translating government documents and on interpreting, which, of course, is not the same as translation and requires different skills.

It’s too bad the article doesn’t mention the need for better language programs in schools in the U.S., since the increased demand for translators will become a problem quickly unless more students start studying foreign languages in depth. The U.S. is far behind other countries in terms of emphasizing the importance of learning multiple languages, and the country needs to stop arrogantly thinking that the rest of the world can learn English and that Americans can remain placidly and lethargically monolingual.

In the U.S., the article says, “certain Middle Eastern and Asian languages have surged in priority in the post 9/11 world.” Learning other languages is beneficial in many ways, of course, including the fact that studying another country’s language and the culture behind it leads to increased understanding, and perhaps fewer conflicts.

The article says that translators are “(w)anted, and in many instances urgently needed,” but where can translators find these jobs? More on that in another post – and any translators who want to share job-finding tips, let me know!

Looking for Clockmakers

It would be great to hear from translators who work frequently, or even exclusively, with poetry. It would also be fascinating to learn more about a poetry translator’s process and even to see it in action. So if you are interested in sharing your process and your experience with us, contact me!

The Clockmaker

The well-known comment by Robert Frost that “(p)oetry is what gets lost in translation” reflects the general idea that if translation as a whole is nearly impossible, then translation of poetry is truly so.

In 2004 at Poesidagarna, an annual poetry festival mentioned in the last post, the Dutch poet Michel Kuijpers, who publishes poetry under the pseudonym K. Michel, compared translation to taking apart a clock. If one wants to understand how a clock works, one takes it apart and studies the pieces before putting it back together. Similarly, if one wants to understand a poem, one takes it apart, studies it, and then puts it back together – in another language. The Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova, who teaches Russian and Lithuanian at Yale, seems to serve as both poet and clockmaker, since he mentioned that when someone is going to translate his work, he writes a detailed explanation of what he meant and what the implications of his word choices are and, if he knows the target language, he also writes a first draft of the potential translation. It’s true that many writers answer their translators’ questions when possible, but what is it about translating poetry that drives a poet to help his translator to such an extent as Mr. Venclova does?

Arguably more so than in prose, both the words and the form matter in poetry. Meter and rhythm are two features of poetry that some translators mention when discussing the difficulty of translating poetry. Prose also has meter and rhythm, of course, although they are often more obvious in poetry. Poetry may also have rhymes, which are quite difficult to translate well. Then there is the language. Poetic language is frequently imaginative and words are used economically, so the preciseness of the translation is especially noticeable and important. There is rarely plot in poetry, at least not in the same way as there is in a novel or a short story, and this makes the emphasis on each word even stronger.

So a translator has many decisions to make. Can the rhymes, the meter, the rhythm be retained? What must be left out or changed if any one of those is retained? And for the words, what images and feelings do they represent in the original language and is it possible to transfer those images and feelings to the target language? Or must replacement images and feelings that work better in the new language be chosen? After all, since languages and cultures don’t work the same way, if a poem is translated too literally, a poet’s whole meaning could be lost in translation.

The elements that make a poem are the same elements that make a poem challenging to translate. But what’s a translator to do? Our job is to find a way to say what seems impossible to say and we serve the writers and the readers by making texts available to a larger audience. We are, as Alexander Pushkin was quoted as saying, “the post-horses of enlightenment.” Although perhaps now we should say that we are the clockmakers of enlightenment.

Kissing Through a Veil

A couple of years ago at Poesidagarna, an annual poetry festival in Malmö, Sweden, the theme was translation, and the event featured poets and their Swedish translators. The poets read from their works in the original language and then the translators read their Swedish translations, and there were also discussions about the translation of these poems. The American poet Donald Hall, who has also published children’s books, plays, and nonfiction, and was the poet laureate of New Hampshire for five years, said that though he didn’t understand most of the languages spoken at the festival, he nevertheless enjoyed hearing the poems read in the original languages and felt that he got something from them despite the language barrier. It was as though the feelings and meanings in the poems were clear simply through the sound of the words; no translation was needed.

In a recent post, I discussed the idea that not all writing can be, or should be, translated. Many readers seem to feel especially strongly about this when it comes to poetry.

In her novel Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels, who is also an award-winning poet, writes, “‘Reading a poem in translation…is like kissing a woman through a veil.’…Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what’s between the lines, the mysterious implications.” This quote suggests that a poem in translation is not as authentic as one in the original language; as though reading and understanding a poem were not considered challenging enough, in translation, the meaning of the poem is veiled, hidden behind a layer. The veil’s thickness and material depend on the translators’ skills, but there is always a veil nonetheless.

Even translator Gregory Rabassa admits, in his memoir If This Be Treason, “I do find that with a language in which I am rather weak, like Russian, I do know just enough to enable me to read poetry along over so many unknown words and yet get to understand it in some ways better than in an English translation that is loud and clear.” So if someone who makes a living as a literary translator would rather read poetry in the original language even if he is not completely fluent in that language, does that mean that translating poetry is so demanding that it is best not attempted?

What, if anything, makes translating poetry different from translating other literature?

More on that in the next post.

Poll Update

The poll is still open and you are encouraged to vote if you haven’t already done so, but so far the clear majority of responses indicate that many people work as translators but have no training to do so. In other words, the majority of respondents have not studied in a translation program or a language program. Perhaps they are people who found themselves living in another country and learned the language so well that they were able to work as translators, or they simply enjoy language, or found it difficult to find another sort of job, or… What’s your reason? How did you get into translation? And do you think your training (or lack of specific training for translators) affects you and your skills? Let me know; I’m interested in hearing other translators’ stories.

Missing Translations

Why are so few literary translations published in English-speaking countries?

As the article mentioned in the last post pointed out, only about 3% of the books published each year in the U.S. are translations, and those are primarily from Spanish, French, and German. The article says that the figure for Italy is 27%. And here in Sweden, not a week goes by when the culture pages of the newspapers don’t review at least one, and usually more, books that have been translated to Swedish. Sure, Sweden’s population is much smaller than the U.S.’s, but I don’t believe the percentages of writers and of readers are that different. Logically, the percentage of literary translations should be about the same. So why are English-speaking countries less interested in foreign literature?

Are there so many more authors in English-speaking countries so that there is no need for work translated from other languages? It seems as though a lot of non-fiction work, including course literature, is published in English and then translated to other languages, but that doesn’t explain the lack of foreign literary fiction translated to English.

Do more people in English-speaking countries write? Even in Sweden, where the “Jantelagen” still reigns and people don’t necessarily want to stand out or be different from others, creative writing seems to be thriving.

Is it easier to get published in the U.S. or England than in other countries? I find that hard to believe, too. Anyone who’s worked in publishing or attempted to get their own writing published knows that many great books are rejected because there are simply too many writers and too few publishing companies, too little money, and too little interest in literary writing.

So has publishing become so much about the bottom line that publishing companies are not willing to spend the money on more literary works? This may be true, since publishing companies are always looking for the next big blockbuster and seem to focus their publishing and marketing efforts on genre books. That’s why thrillers by Swedish writer Henning Mankell are published in English, but more creative works only get a Swedish audience.

Is there simply a lack of interest in foreign cultures? It’s the stereotype of the United States –powerful and self-centered, with no need to study other languages or learn anything about other cultures. But how much truth is in this stereotype? And what is the situation like in other English-speaking countries?

I have no answer to the question posed in this post, but I’m interested in exploring this issue more, and in changing it.

Translation = Survival

I read an article in the New York Times about two upcoming literary festivals that feature writers who write in endangered languages.

In the article, writer Salman Rushdie says, “People are not going to learn Serbian. If Serbian writers are going to survive in the world, they will have to be translated into English.” And a professor named Esther Allen says that the point of these festivals is “inviting these people from outside English into the conversation, and making a place for them in English.”

Exposing people to new literature and helping writers find a larger audience is important and hopefully these festivals will help with those goals, but since, as the article points out, only 3% of the books published in the U.S. are translations, the question remains: why aren’t these writers being translated to English? More on that in the next post.

On Their Own Terms

Can all works be translated? Should they be?

In February, a DVD was filmed here in Helsingborg of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem “Beowulf.” Benjamin Bagby, a modern-day bard who is the star of the film, relies on only the poetry of the old English words, his voice, and the sound of his lyre when performing the poem. He does not perform the work in translation. During his visit to Sweden in February, Mr. Bagby spoke to me about “Beowulf,” including the issue of translation.

If Mr. Bagby recited the poem in modern English, that would mean that what was important was the information, the actual details about what was happening in the story and why. But performing “Beowulf” is not just about transferring information; it’s about the language itself, and what the sound of the words and the meter in the poem mean. “What is the actual music of this that’s locked up in the language?” the bard asks. Dr. John Foley, a professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia and an expert on oral traditions who was an advisor to the film, told me that in the poem, each line has 8-16 syllables, there are always 4 stresses per line, and each of the 2 half lines per line has alliteration. All of that, obviously, would be lost in translation or, if it were to be retained, other aspects of the poem would be lost instead.

“Beowulf,” along with many other texts, is problematic to translate. The translator must consider a variety of different issues even before starting to translate. For example, should the poem be translated as prose or as poetry? If it is translated as a poem, what kind of poem should it be? Should it retain the meter? The rhythm? The sound of the words? What should be prioritized in a translation of “Beowulf” – the style or the sense or the sound? As Mr. Bagby phrases it, “Is the sound the meaning or the meaning the meaning?”

“Beowulf” has been translated into many languages, and sometimes the translations are quite successful, but since the sound of the old English means so much to the story, Mr. Bagby chooses to perform in the original language rather than in a modern English translation. He does use supertitles with short summaries of what he is saying, but it is actually quite possible to understand the poem just from listening to and watching him. “It’s a treat to listen,” he says, “but it demands energy from both the audience and the teller.” Naturally, watching a performance is different from reading a text, and the bard’s tone of voice, movements, and facial expressions help the audience understand what is happening in the story, so readers of “Beowulf” who don’t have the benefit of being able to see a bard perform the tale have no choice (beyond learning Old English, that is) than to enjoy the work in translation instead.

In The Art of Hunger, a collection by Paul Auster that was mentioned in the last post, Mr. Auster discusses a book called Le Schizo et les Langues by Louis Wolfson. I had never heard of this book before, but apparently Mr. Wolfson is a schizophrenic American who wrote his book in French because he was exceedingly uncomfortable with his mother tongue. Mr. Auster says that this book is impossible to translate, in large part because of the language issues dealt with in the text, and, what’s more, that a translation should not even be attempted. “To be fair to him (Mr. Wolfson),” Mr. Auster writes (I translated this quote back to English from Swedish), “we should read him on his own terms.” Only French-speaking readers will be able to read Mr. Wolfson’s book, but the size of the audience should certainly not be the only consideration. The meaning of his book and the integrity of his vision might be hindered if an English translation were made.

Sometimes translators want to believe that most works, even if very challenging, can be translated, or that they should be translated. But there are clearly some works that should be read only on their own terms.

A Creative Act

Today I read a short inteview from 1985 with the author Paul Auster. The interview is titled “Translation” and is in The Art of Hunger, Mr. Auster’s 1992 collection of essays, prefaces, and interviews. I actually read the book in Swedish translation, since that was what was available at my local library, so anything I quote from the interview I’ve translated back to English and thus is probably not the way Mr. Auster really said it.

Mr. Auster mentions how the poet Ezra Pound recommended that young poets translate. I definitely agree that translation is an excellent activity for anyone who is fascinated by and wants to work with words, since translation helps you look at language from so many angles. As Mr. Auster says in the interview, “When you translate, you work with the purely practical aspects of the craft, learn to engage intimately with words, and more clearly understand what you are really doing. That’s the benefit, but there is a disadvantage, too. When you translate, you have no sense of creating something of your own. There is no need to be brilliant or original, no need to attempt things you actually can’t manage.”

In other words, he seems to think that translation is a good way for writers to get more comfortable with writing, but is not a creative act in and of itself. I definitely disagree with this. I believe that it is creative work to have to try to understand what another writer wanted to say and then to find the best possible way to say that in another language, given the constraints of the target language’s vocabulary, grammar, melody, cultural aspects, and so forth. I understand that some poets (among other creative artists) like using specific forms, such as the sonnet or the haiku, precisely because the restrictions imposed by the form force them to be creative in a new way. That was what Oulipo was about. It is true that translators can not give voice to their own thoughts and feelings when they are translating and that they can not work on someone else’s text as though it is their own, but I at least feel that there is a creative challenge in translating and that I often am attempting something I can’t quite manage when I translate.

A Poll on Training

The last post looked at training for translators. I've now created a poll so we can see what kind of training various translators have. Please answer the poll and ask your translator colleagues to do so, too, so we can get as large a sample as possible. The results will be interesting, and the next step will be to find out whether and how your training helped you in your career as a translator.

How did you train to become a translator?
	I attended a translation program.
	I took one course in translation.
	I specialized in another field, such as law, and then transferred my skills to translation.
	I attended a language program.
	I have some other sort of applicable training.
	I worked with/for another translator first.
	I work as a translator, but I have no specific training.
	Other.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Becoming a Craftsman

How does a person learn to be a translator?

There are translation courses and programs, but how useful are they? Is translation the sort of craft that must simply be learned on the job?

Gregory Rabassa, whose memoir has been mentioned in the past couple of posts, calls translation “unteachable.” He writes, “you can explain how translation is done, but how can you tell a student what to say without saying it yourself? You can tell him what book to read but you can’t read it for him. It’s my notion, loose as it might be, that when I’m translating a book, I’m simply reading it in English.” In other words, how can you teach someone to have a true feel for language?

Mr. Rabassa says that people who study to be translators risk becoming “knee-jerk, pedantic, post-modern craftsman,” perhaps because, in the way literature programs now rely heavily on theory rather than on actual literature, some translation courses too focus on theory instead of practice. While theory can be fascinating, students might get so involved with it that they lose their instinct for the practice of translation.

As is clear from his memoir, Mr. Rabassa was quite lucky and was in the right place at the right time. He adds that it was his “good fortune, therefore, to have been left adrift in my circumstances, picking things up in an offhand way…” Other translators, however, need to find some way to make the connections and create the situations he seems to have just fallen into.

Perhaps a mentoring program would be useful. After the would-be translator has thoroughly studied the language/s and the culture/s he plans to work with and developed his analyzing, writing, and editing skills, he could work with an experienced translator and together they could review and discuss translations. Or maybe translation courses should be more like MFA in creative writing programs than like Ph.D. in literature ones, which means they would include workshops, analytical readings of translations, and discussions of what works or doesn’t in translation. And, sure, some theory, too, but not so much that the next generation of translators become knee-jerk, pedantic, post-modern craftsmen.

What sort of education do you have, want, or plan to get, and why? How has your training helped or hindered you as a translator? How would the ideal translation program be organized? Write about your experiences or opinions in the comments section or send me an email. How to train translators is an important issue!

Attempting the Impossible

In the last post, I discussed Gregory Rabassa’s book If This Be Treason. In the summary of the book, I left out an interesting issue, because I felt it deserved a whole post – a whole series of posts even – of its own.

Is translation possible?

Sure, people translate every day and the translations are generally functional and sometimes beautiful. But translation isn’t just about making the same information available in another language; it’s about capturing all the feelings, images, ideas, and considerations behind each word and phrase, and the culture and history underlying the text. Frankly, it seems impossible to do this, for a number of reasons.

For one thing, all readers read a different book. Our individual backgrounds, experiences, interests, and beliefs lead us to interpret and understand each text in a slightly different way than all other readers. For example, imagine a dog right now. What are you seeing in your head? How big is the dog? Is it a mutt or a specific breed? What color is the dog’s fur? How old is it? How large is its tail? We all understand that the word “dog” refers to a furry, four-legged canine of some sort, but in reality, it doesn’t mean the exact same thing to any two people. Take this concept writ large and it is easy to see how each text produces different reactions and feelings and images in each reader. Five readers who read a book could be said to be reading five different books and five translators would translate a book in five different ways. If you consider a translator to be first and foremost a reader (a translator, after all, has to thoroughly read and understand the text in order to be able to translate it), then all translations are dependent on how the translator reads the original document and then on how the readers of the translation understand the translator’s re-creation of the text. So we’re already distanced quite a bit from what the author said in the source language.

The next problem is that languages (and cultures) don’t work in the same way. As with the dog example, there are words and phrases that represent one thing for people who come from a certain culture or speak a particular language, but would imply something else altogether for other groups. How many times have people discussed the fact that the Swedish word “lagom” is very difficult to translate? We can write “just right” or “enough” or something along those lines, but those insufficient English translations miss the whole culture behind the word. To be dramatic, one might even say that to not understand “lagom” is to not understand Sweden. Beyond vocabulary, it’s important to remember that grammar, word order, pronunciation, rhythm, sounds, and many other factors also influence meaning.

So if words don’t have a universal meaning even for people who speak the same language and if various languages emphasize different aspects or have different rules, translation becomes a very difficult task. We simply can’t say the same things in the same ways in all languages; instead, we often have to rephrase or change the meaning slightly.

For many non-fiction translations, it can be enough to just get close. A menu offers chicken and dumplings and salmon with a dill sauce or two parties agree in a contract to work together on a specific project or an instruction manual says to connect this piece to that one. Such translations are often more about the information being transferred than about the language itself and the feelings and images it suggests. But for literary work, the standards are higher and the challenges multiply.

There can never be a perfect translator or a perfect translation. However, as Mr. Rabassa writes, translation “may be impossible but it can at least be essayed.”

Translation as Treason

Earlier this year, I read If This Be Treason by translator Gregory Rabassa and wrote a short review of it that is forthcoming in Facköversättaren (the journal of the Swedish Association of Professional Translators).

The first part of the book is about Mr. Rabassa’s life in general, the second looks specifically at the authors and works he has translated, and the third attempts to answer the question that runs through the entire book: Is translation in fact a sort of treason?

Mr. Rabassa considers translation treason in several ways. A translator can not be truly faithful to the source text, since words do not work the same in different languages and do not have the same meanings or create the same images or feelings, so he commits treason against the individual words, and thus the language, and the culture behind the language. Mr. Rabassa writes that a “betrayal of language is many times the betrayal of words and at the same time it is a reflection of the hurdles present in communicating between cultures.”

He also mentions that there are several types of personal treason committed in translation, that against the author, since his words and meanings are not truly preserved, and against the reader, who only reads and receives the translator’s interpretation and re-creation of the original text, and even against the translator himself, since translators “sacrifice our best hunches in favor of some pedestrian norm in fear of betraying the task we were set to do.”

Mr. Rabassa suggests that one could consider all of life a translation and thus a treason, as “life is an idea, a word, in short, a metaphor for conscious existence and hence a translation. We are translating our existence and our circumstance as we go along living and before we are fatally assigned the translator’s lot once the treason has been done.”

If translation is treason, then I think it is a necessary sort of treason. Obviously, no one can read all texts in their original languages. Language often separates writers from their readers, and readers from information or enjoyment. But translators serve writers and readers by bringing them together, by bridging the language divide.

We translators can only do our best to make the treachery as small as possible.

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.

Unlocking the Prison of Language

If we know that translation goes far beyond the dictionary, where does that leave the translator?

Here’s a short article I wrote a couple of years ago, called “What Makes a Translator?” The third paragraph looks specifically at what skills and qualities a translator should have.

What Makes a Translator?

The “prison of language is only temporary…someday a merciful guard – the perfect translator – will come along with his keys and let us out,” Wendy Lesser wrote in an article, “The Mysteries of Translation,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2002. The following questions remain, however: Who is this translator? What does he do? And what skills should he possess?

Simply put, a translator is a person who recreates a text in another language, attempting to keep a delicate balance between being so literal that the text sounds awkward and unnatural in the new language or being so free that the text has become virtually unrecognizable. A translator has to not only translate the words, but also the concepts. In other words, a translator unlocks the prison of language, as Ms. Lesser said, and helps a text break free of its limited original language, culture, and audience. This service is an unfortunately under-appreciated art and craft.

To do all the above, a translator must have the following things: a native or near-native level of proficiency in both the source language (the language to be translated from) and the target language (the language to be translated to); the ability to thoroughly understand all that a text says and implies; and excellent writing and editing skills. Ideally, the translator would also have a lot of knowledge about both the source and target language cultures, as this affects word usage and meaning, as well as about the author of the original document and his style of writing.

It all sounds rather formidable, certainly, but not impossible. There are, in fact, many excellent practitioners out there who fulfill these hefty requirements, but the tiny number of translated books published in the United States each year reveals the sad fact that few people take up this challenging and stimulating work. If only more people would join the ranks of translators and help unlock the prison of language.

In other words, the skills an ideal translator would possess are:

1. Native or near-native proficiency in the source language.

2. Native proficiency in the target language.

3. Excellent reading comprehension abilities.

4. Excellent writing abilities.

5. Excellent editing abilities.

6. Thorough knowledge of the source language culture.

7. Thorough knowledge of the target language culture.

8. Knowledge of the author.

No wonder not that many people work with unlocking the prison of language!

Of course, not all translators can live up to this ideal, but it is helpful to think about what we should be working towards.

Where the Dictionary Ends

Well, starting a blog about translation leads to two obvious questions: What exactly is translation? And what does a translator do? There are no short answers here and analyzing what translation is and what a translator does or should be is precisely what I plan to look at in the course of this blog.

Basically, translation is the act of recreating a text in a different language. Etymologically speaking, it is the “carrying across” of words from one language to another. This does not mean, however, that to translate is merely to look up each word in a given text (each word, that is, in the so-called “source language”) in the dictionary and then write down its equivalent in another language (the “target language”).

To illustrate how this technique can lead a translator terribly off-course, we can look at something some of my students do. I teach English to adults and a few of them are either resistant to the idea of learning a new language or else they simply feel “too old” or too discouraged to do so. A sneaky way they attempt to get out of actually putting in effort is to use the dictionary trick. If I assign some writing for homework, these resistant students might, instead of writing directly in English, write in their native language and then use the dictionary to translate their sentences word by word into English. It’s always pretty clear when someone has done this because many of the mistakes are obvious. One student, for example, repeatedly wrote the word “sheep” instead of “get” because the same Swedish word (“får”) covers both English words and he just picked the first word he saw in the dictionary and wrote it down without thinking about whether it was correct. He wrote, “I sheep food at a restaurant.”

You might think that someone who claims to be a translator would know better than to do this, but remembering some of the funny or odd mistranslations I’ve seen leads me to believe otherwise. Besides, translation is not just about the meaning of the words. A translator must carefully consider the culture behind the original text and how that influenced the author, and why an author made the choices s/he did, and how all this can be expressed in a new language in a natural way that does not lose or change anything. As Mikhail Ivanov wrote in an article entitled “Bulgakov’s Post Horses,” translation “begins where the dictionary ends.”

This topic will be continued in the next post.

Welcome

Welcome to this new blog! Here I will look at translation, language, literature, and any other related topics.

I’m originally from Chicago and now live in southern Sweden, where I translate from Swedish to English, copy edit, write, and teach English. This means that I work with language in a variety of ways, and this is great for me, since I’ve been fascinated by language for as long as I can remember.

I became interested in translation when I moved to Sweden and started to learn Swedish. In order to improve my language skills, I read children’s books. I was impressed by the quality of Swedish children’s books and began wondering how these books would sound in English and analyzing what made them work in Swedish and how that could transfer to English. Within a couple of years, I had started my own company, A Way With Words, and translation became one part of my business. Right now, I primarily do non-fiction translation (menus, recipes, contracts, instruction manuals, websites, advertisements, articles, tourist information, and so forth), but I would like to transition into working on literary translation as well. As I discovered when I first came to Sweden, there are many great literary works here that deserve an audience in English-speaking countries.

I’m excited about looking at translation in this blog and I welcome reader comments and suggestions.