Nordic Translation Conference Report, Part 1

Well, the Nordic Translation Conference is now over, and I am pleased to say it was a great success. It brought together a diverse group of people: translators of technical, legal, and financial texts; translators of literary fiction or poetry; interpreters; subtitlers; editors; publishers; authors; people from embassies or from government agencies; translation agencies; booksellers; librarians; and more. The two things we all had in common were that we worked with or were interested in translation in some way and that we were involved with one or more Nordic languages. And yet, throughout the course of the weekend, we found that we could learn from one another, and that we had much to share with each other and explore together.

This conference was a first for the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies in four ways: 1) it was the first conference they had that was organized by a PhD student (that would be yours truly); 2) it was the first conference they had on the Nordic languages (despite the fact that they are called GermanIC, they previously only had German); 3) it was their first conference on translation they had; and 4) it was the biggest conference they have had (we had around 150 participants, and many more were turned away, though we had expected about half that).

It was also a first in general for there to be a major international conference on all the Nordic languages and their translation, and people seemed to enjoy having the opportunity to meet colleagues.

In the following post, I will write about some of the highlights for me and I will try to include some photos as well.

Off to the Nordic Translation Conference

I am leaving for London shortly to attend the Nordic Translation Conference. I hope I will see some of you there; if so, please introduce yourself to me. If you haven't yet signed up, I am afraid it is too late, as the conference is completely sold out.

After the conference, I am going to Sweden to do research for which I received a generous grant from Stiftelsen Karin och Hjalmar Tornblads fond in Sweden.

So, my upcoming travels mean that I will be posting less often. However, I will likely post about the conference early next week, and keep checking back for other posts as well.

The Theory-Practice Relationship

Last weekend, I attended a conference at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The focus of the conference was on the theory and practice of translation. The question discussed was basically what relationship translation theory and the practice of translation have, or should have.

It often surprises me to find translation theorists who don’t actually translate themselves. Of course I know that, for example, movie critics aren’t usually directors or actors themselves and literary critics aren’t always writers, and that you can learn a lot about a topic by reading about it. Still, I feel that it is hard to create theory or to work as a critic without some active knowledge of the practice.

Many theorists get annoyed about how practicing translators tend to ignore the theoretical work. Translators sometimes feel that they learn hands-on and don’t have to read what seems to be dull and irrelevant and distant from their work.

In other words, there is a divide between theorists and practitioners. Some of us do both and want to see more of a connection. But why? My feeling is that theorists would greatly benefit from doing and not just thinking and critiquing, while practitioners might get some new ideas or understanding from reading some of the theoretical ideas. Yes, it sounds obvious, but apparently a lot of people are still missing the point.

My own presentation at the conference was about how certain theories (in this particular case, postcolonial theories) could inform a translator’s decisions for a text and choice of strategies by making the translator more aware of certain issues (here, the role of power). As a practicing translator myself, I’ve certainly found that not only is it interesting to learn about translation theory, but it can also improve my work, although there are definitely some ideas that I have dismissed.

A Round-Up of Articles

Here are a bunch of articles on language and translation; not all are recent, but that doesn’t make them less interesting or relevant.

First, here is an obituary for Icelandic translator Bernard Scudder. I had contact with him because he was going to speak at the Nordic Translation Conference next month, and I was saddened to hear of his premature death.

Next, here is an article on the evolution of language.

For those of you who can read Swedish and who have been following the situation with funding for translation in Sweden, you will want to read this article for the latest news.

This article by Chinese to English translator Howard Goldblatt is a few years old, but still worth a read. Interesting quotes include:
-“the unavoidable fact that a translation can only complement, not replicate, the original.”
-“And yet the relationship cannot help but be fragile, given an author's desire to have his work reach the broadest possible audience with the exact effect it had on its original readers. Too often, that desire is accompanied by absolute ignorance about the nature of translation, or a disdain for it, or a combination of the two.”
-“Translation is inadequate, but it’s all we have if good writing is to have its life extended, spatially and temporally.”

The next article is by Israeli author Etgar Keret and is on two Hebrew words that “do have English equivalents, except that in Hebrew—or maybe it would be more accurate to say "in Israeli"—they carry completely different values.”

Sticking to the Middle East, here is an article on learning Arabic.

For a completely different language, this piece talks about Hawaiian making a comeback.

Finally, a bit of humor. Here is a sketch entitled “The Impotence of Proofreading.”

Italian Translation Award

I saw this announcement about an award for a translation from or to Italian on the MODLANGSRT list:

PATHS OF CULTURE 2008 TRANSLATION PRIZE

IPOC Press, the Milan, Italy-based publisher, invites translators to participate in the 2008 Paths of Culture Translation Prize by submitting translations in the following categories:
-- Translations into Italian from any language
and
-- Translations into English from Italian.
Competition entries may include translations in any of the following disciplines: cultural anthropology, autobiography/memoir, philosophy, management, pedagogy/educational sciences, psychology, sociology, history, and fiction/literature.

Highlights:
* Winning entries will be published by IPOC Press;
* The winning Translator will receive a prize of EUR150.00 as well as a contract that includes a royalty provision. (NB: In the event of works translated by multiple translators, the prize is intended as "per manuscript" and not per translator.)

Deadline:
Submissions must be postmarked (not received) by: 30 September 2008.
For full details and a manuscript submission form, please download the complete announcement from the IPOC Press site:http://www.ipocpress.it/eng/Concorso.pdf

News on Children's Literature

Some of you who read this blog know that children’s literature is one of my special interests. So I thought I’d share two bits of children’s lit-related news with you.

First, the most recent issue of Transcript is devoted to children’s literature. Transcript describes itself as “the trilingual European Internet Review of Books and Writing” and it is “published by Literature Across Frontiers at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth,” and “funded by the European Union's Culture 2000 fund.”

Second, Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books has launched a new website which gives “access to records of its extensive collection of artwork and archives.” Seven Stories is in Newcastle upon Tyne and people can see exhibits and do research there.

Nice Pants: On Differences Between UK and US English

I've posted here about differences between UK and US English, but just because I've studied up on the topic doesn't mean I always remember my lessons.

A few days, while chatting with a Welsh woman at my university, I said to her, "I like your pants! They're quite nice!"

Well, naturally, she looked pretty shocked. I had forgotten that "pants" in UK English refers to underwear. She looked down, to make sure her underwear wasn't showing, and then she burst into laughter and said, "You mean my trousers, right?" We had a laugh then about my mistake and about UK versus US English.

It was a good reminder that translation doesn't always occur between two distinct languages; it can also take place between two versions or dialects or registers of the same tongue.

WALTIC Conference

Some readers of this blog might be interested in the WALTIC conference that will take place in Stockholm this summer. Here is some information I received:

Welcome to WALTIC – the Value of Words!
A global arena for collaboration, creating opinion and achieving change

In June 2008, the Swedish Writers’ Union will launch WALTIC - the Value of Words, the first literary world congress of its kind. Between 29 June and 2 July 2008 one thousand writers, translators and scholars will gather for a mutual manifestation of the value of words and in support of human rights.

The key philosophy of WALTIC is to consider literature as a source of knowledge with political strength. The written word and the inherent power of the narrative is the basis for global society as a whole. That is why, in the words of Philip Pullman, “dictators and tyrants hate literature: the secret democracy of reading is too strong for them to withstand.” It is our conviction that the writers and translators of the world play an important role as mediators of knowledge, creators of opinion and as achievers of public change.

WALTIC will focus on three urgent global issues: Literacy, Intercultural dialogue and Digitalisation. The program offers a wealth of seminars, lectures and best practices. Among the speakers you will find leading writers and scholars as well as translators and innovative poets – with even numbers of women and men represented.

WALTIC will take a stand to: Increase literacy, safeguard freedom of expression, and strengthen authors’ rights.

We hope to see you in Stockholm at WALTIC 2008!

Call for Best Practice & Call for Stories now open!

Call for Best Practice
The Best Practice program will include a number of topics that concern writers and literary translators, as well as practical work related to the main themes of WALTIC. The program will hold everything from Writers’ and Translators’ Issues and Creative Writing to Literacy and Intercultural Exchange.

Call for Stories
WALTIC is a unique literary congress insofar as it also engages high-profile academics from around the world. Alongside independent writers and translators, we therefore particularly encourage researchers and academics to share their work within WALTIC’s exclusive Stories program.

The oral presentations are 15 or 30 minutes for both programs and submitters are welcome to indicate their preference. For more information and topics, see www.waltic.com

Deadline for on-line submission 3 March, 2008

Resident of a low-income country? Please look into the WALTIC scholarship program.

WALTIC 2008 is arranged in close co-operation with SIDA, The Swedish National Commission for UNESCO and SI (Svenska Institutet)

Versioning vs. Translating

Last week, I attended the conference for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in New York City. There were several panels on translation, which was exciting to see. However, it seems quite obvious that not everyone really understands what translation is.

At the first panel I attended on translation, one woman (who shall remain nameless) was introduced as "a poet and translator." However, it quickly became clear that this woman was a monolingual. She didn't know the language she was "translating" from, nor did she know much about the culture, and she had never visited the country. How, then, did she translate?

Well, she is a professor at a university. She found a professor in the psychology department who was a native speaker of the language in question; that professor wrote a literal translation of the poem, and our "translator" then rewrote it as she saw fit. In other words, she took word-for-word translations and wrote versions of them.

Versioning is indeed a form of creative writing, but it is not translation. To truly translate, one must know the language the work is written in and the culture that informs the work. There is team-translation, but this doesn't seem to fall into that category.

It was surprising and disappointing that at a major conference, there was such confusion about what translation is.

The Chimaera's Found in Translation Issue

A short story I translated by Swedish author Mats Kempe and a short essay I wrote on translation have now been published online in a new journal called The Chimaera. This issue of the magazine focuses on translation, and I look forward to reading the other works in it.

Translation Studies Summer School

From a translation studies list, I noticed the following information on a summer school that would be useful for those who want to begin to do research in the field:

Announcing a funding opportunity for the Translation Research Summer School
2008

Two full scholarships (covering fees, travel and accommodation) are now available for current or future PhD students to participate in the 2008 Translation Research Summer School which will take place in Manchester, UK, from 16 to 27 June.

The Summer School offers intensive research training in translation and intercultural studies for prospective researchers in the field, over a two-week period. The units collaborating in the Summer School are the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, the Centre for Intercultural Studies at University College London (UCL), and the Translation Studies Graduate Programme, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh.

The deadline for scholarship applications is 22 February.

These scholarships are specifically designed to provide assistance to students from countries with lower GDPs. For further details and an application form please consult the Translation Research Summer School website: www.researchschool.org

The Times Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation

On the Modern Languages Research Training list, I saw the following announcement:

THE TIMES STEPHEN SPENDER PRIZE
for poetry in translation
Translate a poem from any language, classical or modern, into English
Three categories: Open, 18-and-under and 14-and-under. Cash prizes
All winning entries published in a booklet
Last posting date for entries Friday 23 May 2008
For details and entry forms go to www.stephen-spender.org
To read last year's winning entries, visit the website or email
info@stephenspender.org for a free copy of the booklet

Robina Pelham Burn, Director, Stephen Spender Memorial Trust
3 Old Wish Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN21 4JX 01323 452294
info@stephenspender.org
www.stephen-spender.org

Taking a Break and AWP Conference

For the next month, I will be travelling, so I won’t be posting as often. However, I will still post as possible, so do check back. Also, if you happen to be going to the conference for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in New York City, let me know. I’ll be on a panel there on February 1 about including translation in MFA programs. Here is a description of the panel:

Translation in MFA Programs. (B.J. Epstein, J.T. Barbarese, Douglas Robinson, Geoffrey Brock, Marjolijn de Jager) MFA programs have proliferated recently, but the majority of them pointedly lack one writing form: the art and craft of translation. And yet, literary translation is a vital and challenging career that demands creativity and poetic skills. In this panel, translators, professors, MFA program directors, and translation studies researchers discuss what translation is, how it relates to creative writing, and why and how to include it in MFA programs.

Raising Rates

The beginning of a new year is when many freelancers raise their rates. I’m interested to know how often this happens (every year, every few years, when you think of it, etc.) and by how much (5%, 10%, a few pennies/pence/kronor/other relevant currency, etc.).

As for me, since I rarely work for agencies and since I don’t generally do just one kind of translation work, I don’t have completely set rates. Instead, I estimate the cost of each project by looking it over and trying to figure out how difficult it is, how much work is required, and how much time it will take me, plus I take into consideration how soon the client wants the work completed. This in turn means that I don’t have an annual increase in rates. Rather, as I get more experience and as I get more compliments and messages of gratitude from customers, I slowly increase my prices a bit. I probably don’t do this often enough, but as I try not to quote prices that are lower than I know I deserve or that I feel comfortable with, I am generally satisfied with rates that are fair both to my customers and to me.

From informally talking to other translators or from seeing messages on translation lists, however, it seems that an annual increase in rates is quite common. Judging by the rates people list, I estimate that their fees go up by about 8% a year. What do you do? Please vote below.

How often do you raise your rates?

Every year.Every few years.More than once a year.Whenever the market seems to allow for it.When I think of it.Other.

Free polls from Pollhost.com

How much do you raise your rates by?

1-5%5-8%8-10%10-15%15% or moreOther.I rarely or never raise my rates.

Free polls from Pollhost.com

A Roar for Powerful Writing

For the last post of the year, I’m going to discuss powerful writing.

Not long ago, I was honored with a “roar for powerful writing”. See Erika Dreifus’ very kind post for more on that. And see this site for more on the roar.

The “roar” requires that those roared at list three things that they think are needed for powerful writing and also that they then roar at five others.

First of all, I think writers have to learn to not be afraid. It can be really hard, I know; there have been many times when I’ve not written something, or else written it but kept it to myself, for fear of offending others. As I get older, however, I realize that holding yourself back in that way or not being completely honest works against the writing, and can affect you personally, too. I’m learning to let go of my fears and hang-ups, and to open myself, in order to allow the written work (including translation) to be all that it could be.

That relates to my second point. My own writing has suffered both when I have tried to rein in my topics/opinions/feelings and also when I’ve tried to write about things I didn’t honestly care about. So now I know that without passion and engagement, my piece isn’t going anywhere. Not only that, but if I don’t care, why should the reader?

A third comment follows from the last two. You may have an interesting topic and you may be ready to write about it without worrying excessively about other people’s feelings, but you also need to write about it in a way that isn’t forced or awkward. I’m in favor of keeping it simple, which means don’t overreach or make a text more complicated than necessary. No jargon (unless strictly required). I read way too many articles and books by authors who seem to think that by using bigger and/or more specialized words and many clauses, their work will seem more intelligent. It doesn’t. It seems pretentious and often it is clear that the overly fancy language is trying to hide what really is just a small idea (or no idea). Don’t force the language. Let it work for you and for your ideas.

On to the bloggers I’d like to roar at. Unfortunately for me, Erika’s two blogs, one on writing and the other on Jewish topics, are the first ones I would have thought of to link to. So I want to roar back at her. Now, for five more blogs that I enjoy; none, you might be interested to know, are about translation, though one is about language in general. Instead, they are on other topics that are fascinating for their own sake but these enthusiastic, talented bloggers find a way of drawing in readers even more. That’s why their writing is powerful.

Carl Zimmer writes about science for the New York Times, among other publications. His blog sometimes goes into more depth than his articles have space for and he also discusses other topics as well. I’m no scientist, but I learn a lot from his writing, and sometimes wish I were a scientist because he makes it so interesting.

I enjoy the career advice over at Penelope Trunk’s blog, Brazen Careerist. Not all of it is directly applicable to me as a translator or a freelancer, of course, but the ideas are often worth thinking about or storing away for possible future use.

I recently discovered Margaret Robinson’s website, which has a lot of interesting, well-written material on issues of sexuality, particularly bisexuality. I was glad to see that she has a blog, too, so that I could include her here, though the blog is new and so far doesn’t have too many posts.

I liked Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt’s book Freakonomics, so I was excited to see that they started writing for the NY Times Magazine some time back, and now they have a blog there as well. Popularizing science and social science is getting more common these days, but I still think Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt are among the best at doing it.

Finally, because I can’t not include a blog on language, I want to mention David Crystal’s blog. As you can see from his regular website, he is a prolific writer and an expert on the English language. His book The Stories of English is a good history of a tongue that, as these blogs reveal, can be used very powerfully indeed.

Thank you again to Erika for roaring at me. I hope you enjoy the sites I have now roared at.

Have a wonderful 2008, filled with powerful writing and powerful translations!

A Round-Up of Articles

Here’s a round-up of articles for the weekend.

This blog post calls translation “both the most parasitic form of writing and the purest.” It goes on to say “It’s writing without storytelling, without plot, or character, or any of the other gifts that only a few lucky fictioneers have it in them to deploy. No, translation is writing at its most elemental linguistic level, with the kit provided and only the words missing. It belongs alongside singing or acting or symphony conducting — an interpretive art, but no less an art for all that. Translation is what painting by numbers would be, if only the painter had as many colors handy as there are words in the Oxford English Dictionary.” The writer of the post also admits, “My translation work so far hews toward the irreverent, making free with a lot of colloquialism, anachronism, and general puckishness. My Spanish isn’t the greatest, either, so I probably couldn’t be slavishly faithful to the original if I tried.”

As a native Chicagoan, I enjoyed the Chicagopedia, with words/concepts specific to Chicago.

A post on another blog looks at a translation effect called “flattening”. The writer says, “There’s a kind of translation-effect that you would think would be quite easy to avoid: flattening, or choosing a word much less powerful and vivid than the original.” He adds, “These are not mistakes or mistranslations in the usual sense, since they fall within the general semantic range. You could imagine a situation where you'd want to translate gemir with grieve (you could, maybe, but I can't), or golpear with knock. But why would a translator want to consistently err on the side of weakening the effect? It's like making a photocopy of an original and having the print look obviously fainter.”

An article on new words/phrases from 2007, including bromance, crowdsource, gorno, nose bidet, and vegansexual.

The Brooklyn Rail literary magazine has a new section for translation. You might enjoy the first three works published there and you might want to submit there yourself. I thank translator and poet Rika Lesser for sending me this link.

Nordic Translation Conference

Some of the readers of this blog may be interested in getting the latest information on the Nordic Translation Conference. Most of the details are now on the conference website. The only thing missing is the registration form, which the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies will have ready in early January.

I hope to see some of you at the conference in London in March!

Grants for Finnish Translators

The website for the Finnish Literature Exchange has grant and program information for translators from Finnish.

A Smooth Lawn, Not a Volcano

Yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac featured the following information on a productive, if not “faithful”, translator, who apparently didn’t have a problem with changing source texts to fit the target culture:

“It’s the birthday of Constance Garnett, born in Brighton, England (1861). She gave us many of the first English translations of famous 19th-century Russian novels. Garnett could translate 5,000 words a day, scattering piles of pages at her feet as she wrote. She finished Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in six months, and translated a total of 80 volumes, including Dostoyevsky’s complete works, which alone add up to about two and a half million words. But Garnett had a habit of skipping phrases that she didn’t understand, she often missed the humor of the original Russian, and she altered sexuality in the novels to reflect her Victorian ideals. Critic Kornei Chukovsky compared her writings to “a safe blandscript: not a volcano... a smooth lawn mowed in the English manner — which is to say a complete distortion of the original.” Constance Garnett’s translations held up as the standard for decades, but now most of them are replaced by more nuanced versions of the Russian works.”

Pippi By Any Other Name

How to translate names is a fascinating topic, and is often more complicated than people realize. I’ve spent some time researching it and while I won’t go on about my research at this time, I can say that there are two main kinds of names in fiction (plus lots of variations on these two): ones used just because people/characters generally need some sort of name and ones used descriptively, to say something about the person/character. The first kind of name is often retained as-is in translation, while the second frequently is translated.

A Swedish publication writes that Pippi Långstrump (that’s Pippi Longstocking to you English-speakers) has been translated to more than 60 languages. Here are a few of Pippi’s foreign names, according to the article:

Chinese : Changwazi Pipi
Estonian : Pipi Pikksukk
Finnish : Peppi Pitkätossu
French : Fifi Brindacier
Greek : Pipe Phakidomyte
Hebrew : Bilbee Bat-Gerev
Icelandic : Lína Langsokkur
Japanese : Nagakutsushita no Pippi
Kurdish : Pippi-Ya Goredirey
Latvian : Pepija Garzeķe
Macedonian : Pipi dolgiot corap
Polish : Fizia Pończoszanka
Portuguese : Bibi Meia-Longa
Spanish : Pipi Calzaslargas
Thai : Pippi Thung-Taow Yaow

If would be interesting to know if Pippi’s last name in all those languages means “long stocking”.

A Question of Ethics: Subcontracting Work

In tomorrow’s NY Times, The Ethicist column looks at a question about freelance work. The issue is that someone subcontracted out two freelance writing jobs to another writer, and then the end customers were very pleased with the work but didn’t know that someone else had done it. Randy Cohen, the Ethicist, thinks it was wrong for the middleman (actually, middlewoman in this case) to not tell the end customers who did the work; he calls her self-serving and says there should have been transparency.

I understand his point, but I don’t often see that kind of behavior (I mean the kind he recommends) in freelance work. Someone is hired to do a job and is therefore responsible for the end product, whether it is good or bad; if he or she subcontracts it out, that is fine, but the end customer usually isn’t aware of that. If the end customer wants to use the same freelancer for future projects, it is probably more honest of the freelancer to say who actually did the previous assignment, but I don’t think it is always necessary. It could be that the freelancer was particularly busy at that time or didn’t specialize in the appropriate area; she or he could feel that this new project is right for her or him for whatever reason, so there is therefore no real need to mention who did that other project.

I do know some people who generously pass on clients, especially if the client was very pleased with the work a subcontractor did, and I also know people who prefer to keep the client, but who keep subcontracting out work from that client, sometimes even giving the subcontractor the entire fee and not just a portion of it. Other freelancers occasionally make sure the subcontractor gets credit; I did this with a recent assignment, and both my name and that of the freelancer I hired were featured in the final product, though there was no direct contact between the customer and my subcontractor. So there are a variety of ways of handling such a situation.

Don’t get me wrong – I am all in favor of treating freelancers (including, obviously, subcontractors) well, and I also believe strongly in accepting only assignments for which I am skilled, which means that if I hire someone to do a job for which they are better suited, then it would be better to let them have the client contact, so they can continue to do that kind of work while I can do other assignments. I just think the issue is more complicated than Mr. Cohen let on (or could have let on, given the length restrictions of his column).

Santa Lucia Day

Today is Santa Lucia Day in Sweden, and other countries. Here is an article I wrote last year about it. That article includes a recipe for the traditional “lussekatter” buns.

Lussekatter

Ingredients
1 3/4 sticks butter, melted
1 cup heavy cream
.06 ounces saffron threads
1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
6 (.25-ounce) packages yeast
1 cup 2 percent low-fat milk, warm
2 eggs, beaten separately
1 teaspoon salt
8 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup raisins

Instructions
1. Combine melted butter and cream.
2. Crush saffron with 1 tablespoon sugar in a mortar until very fine.
3. Combine yeast, milk and 2 tablespoons sugar; let stand 10 minutes or until mixture is foamy.
4. Add butter mixture, saffron mixture, 1 of the beaten eggs and salt to yeast mixture. Stir well. Add remaining sugar. Add 6 cups flour; stir until a stiff dough forms. Turn mixture out onto a floured surface; knead about 10 minutes, adding additional flour 1/2 cup at a time, until dough is smooth and elastic. Place in a large bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and let rise for about 1 hour or until doubled in size.
5. Boil water and pour over raisins; let sit until raisins are plump.
6. Preheat the oven to 475F. Knead dough and divide into 24 pieces. Shape each into an S shape. Place 2 raisins at ends of buns. Let rise 1 hour. Brush with remaining beaten egg. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until browned. Yield: 24 buns.

A Round-Up of Articles

This set of articles should keep you happily occupied for awhile!

Yesterday was the Nobel Prize ceremony. Literature prize-winner Doris Lessing was too ill to attend, but she recorded a lecture from the UK. You can read it here.

An article in English in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter gives a little insight into the way the Nobel Prizes are decided.

As this funny article shows, one mispronunciation can really change the meaning.

The much-beloved Paddington Bear is being updated to reflect the times. See this brief article for more on the new Paddington book.

A recent story from the Guardian is on on translating to Arabic and a project aiming to eventually publish 500 translations a year. “Four years ago the UN’s Arab human development report identified a lack of translated foreign works as an issue restricting Arab intellectual life. The UN report noted that Spain translates in one year the number of books that have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years.”

This article is on translating the Gospel of Judas Iscariot.

As someone who has studied Latin, I was interested in this editorial on why studying Latin is useful. There is some talk of translation in the article too, such as in the following quote: “learning to translate Latin into English and vice versa is a tremendous way to train the mind. I think of translating concise, precise Latin into more expansive, discursive English as like opening up a concertina; you are allowed to inject all sorts of original thought and interpretation. As much as opening the concertina enlarges your imagination, squeezing it shut — translating English into Latin — sharpens your prose. Because Latin is a dead language, not in a constant state of flux as living languages are, there’s no wriggle room in translating. If you haven’t understood exactly what a particular word means or how a grammatical rule works, you are likely to be, not off, but just plain wrong. There’s nothing like this challenge to teach you how to navigate the reefs and whirlpools of English prose.”

I had no idea that Papua New Guinea Has Four Times As Many Languages As Europe. I also found it interesting to know that: “Only about 10,000 words in modern English date back to the Anglo-Saxon language used by the authors of Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon; the rest of the roughly 500,000 words in common use have been arriving for centuries from all directions.”

The A Word A Day newsletter recently included a link to this article about the Salish–Pend d’Oreille language and language death in general.

Finally, more children are studying Chinese today, according to this story. A quote says: “The number of elementary and secondary school students studying Chinese could be as much as 10 times higher than it was seven years ago, says Marty Abbott, spokeswoman for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. When the council surveyed K-12 enrollment in foreign language classes in 2000, there were about 5,000 students of Chinese, Abbott says. The council is collecting data for another survey, but Abbott says early figures suggest the number of students now studying Chinese has “got to be somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000.”” Another quote points out: “Interest in languages comes and goes. Latin was the sine qua non- from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. French has always been the language of culture. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German was the choice among those interested in science.”

Learning to Sail Our Own Ships

This is the 200th post on this blog!

While working on writing abstracts on the essays in The Translation of Children’s Literature (edited by Gillian Lathey), I noticed this quote in an essay by Birgit Stolt: “Jakob Grimm compared the task of the translator with that of a sailor: the latter mans a ship, directs it with full sails to the opposing shore, but then has to land ‘where there is different earth and where different air plays.’” (67)

Reading that reminded me of this quote from Louisa May Alcott: “I don’t worry about the storms, for I am learning to sail my own ship.”

So, fellow translators, let’s continue sailing our own ships, managing the different earth and the different air, and not minding all the storms we meet on our way.

The Best Of...

I recently reviewed a book for The Danforth Review (you can read my review here). The book was an anthology of the best Canadian short stories of 2006. I have to admit that I do tend to like such collections, because an anthology is a convenient way of getting an overview of the kind of writing happening in a particular place (or at a particular time, or by a particular group of people). Rather than having to track down individual stories in translation by Israeli authors or contemporary writers working in Spanish or works by gay men writing in English or whatever, it’s done for me.

But you have to wonder what you are missing by reading such a book – what is the bias of the editor (or the editorial staff)? What style of writing is preferred and why? Which topics are featured? What does the publisher want to show about a certain group and why? Is the writing really the number one priority, or is the audience being considered? For example, are readers of translated works looking to get their opinions about a specific ethnic group confirmed, and is the publisher/editor aware of this and therefore choosing stories with an eye towards confirming (or even working against) those stereotypes? Are the translators given instructions about how to translate?

So while I will keep enjoying anthologies, I do try to be conscious of all the hidden decisions that go into creating them.

One Little Letter

We translators are used to thinking about words. But sometimes we have to focus on individual letters.

In Clifford E. Landers’ book, Literary Translation: A Practical Guide, which has been mentioned in the past couple of posts, he talks about how he kept trying to figure out what the Portuguese word “viago” meant. He asked many people and spent a lot of time thinking about it, and it was the author who eventually set him straight. There was no such word; Landers finally found out that it was a typo for “visgo.”

Not long ago, I had a similar situation. I was struggling with a Swedish sentence, which I just couldn’t get to make sense. The word “de” confused me, because it seemed out of place. At last I asked my partner, who took one brief look at the sentence and informed me that “de” was a typo; it should have been “den”. I immediately saw that that was the case and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it myself. I realized that I kept blaming myself and suspecting I just couldn’t get it, instead of considering that maybe something was wrong with the text.

The fact is, typographical errors in texts of all kinds are extremely common. I see typos every day. I see them in newspapers and magazines, in books, on signs in stores, online, in menus, and so on. So why do we generally assume that a text we are translating has been perfectly edited? Why do we strain to try to make sense out of an odd sentence before even thinking about the possibility that it is not a lack of understanding or intelligence on our part that is causing the problem but simply a mistake in the text? Why don’t we ask the author or editor about the sentence? Are we too embarrassed about being translators who have questions about the text?

One little letter can change the meaning of a phrase (or even remove the meaning from a phrase entirely). Perhaps we would do well to remember that texts to be translated can include typos, and probably do. So if something doesn’t make sense to us, we might want to think about whether a letter might be missing or wrong; that won’t always be the case, but it could be more often than we think.

The Commandments of Literary Translation

In the last post, I briefly discussed Clifford E. Landers’ book Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. I enjoyed his “Twelve Commandments of Literary Translation” that he included in the book:

The Twelve Commandments of Literary Translation

I Thou shalt honor thine author and thy reader.
II Thou shalt not ‘improve’ upon the original.
III Thou shalt read the source text in its entirety before beginning.
IV Thou shalt not guess.
V Thou shalt consult thine author and other native speakers.
VI Thou shalt consult earlier translations only after finishing thine own.
VII Thou shalt possess – and use – a multitude of reference works.
VIII Thou shalt respect other cultures.
IX Thou shalt perceive and honor register and tone, that thy days as a translator may be long.
X Thou shalt not commit purple prose.
XI Thou shalt maintain familiarity with the source-language culture.
XII Thou shalt fear no four-letter word where appropriate.

Though I would add to the eleventh commandment that a translator should maintain familiarity with the target-language culture, too, as well as to both languages.

Literary Translation: A Practical Guide

In the last post, I mentioned Clifford E. Landers’ book Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. I happened to pick it up at the library a couple of weeks ago and I think it is a good book for beginners; it discusses many of the things I have posted about here before, and has information about a lot of aspects of translation, some of which people don’t necessarily consider. For example, his chapter on a day in the life of a literary translator shows the different decisions he makes (about contractions, honorifics, swear words, and much more) and the research he carries out as he translates. There is also information in the book about contracts, copyright, ethics, and ideology. His view is quite pragmatic; when trying to decide whether to define certain dishes referred to in a literary text, he says that he is not translating a cookbook or a sociological treatise, but a novel. Therefore, no long explanations or footnotes should be used. In sum, Landers’ guide offers a broad view of literary translation as well as some short discussions of particularly challenging or interesting topics, and it is worth reading.

La Dernière Translation

Not long ago, I read Clifford E. Landers’ book Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. I will write more about the book itself in upcoming posts, but for now, here is a poem included in it:

La Dernière Translation
by Millôr Fernandes
translated by Clifford E. Landers

When an old translator dies
Does his soul, alma, anima,
Free now of its wearisome craft
Of rendering
Go straight to heaven, ao céu,
al cielo, au ciel, zum Himmel,
Or to the hell – Hölle – of the great
traditori?
Or will a translator be considered
In the minute hierarchy of the divine
(himmlisch)
Neither fish, nor water, ni posson ni l’eau
Nem água, nem piexe, nichts, assolutamente
niente?
What of the essential will this
mere intermediary of semantics, broker
of the universal Babel, discover?
Definitive communication, without words?
Once again the first word?
Will he learn, finally!,
Whether HE speaks Hebrew
Or Latin?
Or will he remain infinitely
In the infine
Until he hears the Voice, Voz, Voix, Voce,
Stimme, Vox,
Of the Supreme Mystery
Coming from beyond
Flying like a birdpássarouccelapájarovogel
Addressing him in…
And giving at last
The translation of Amen?

A Round-Up of Articles

I’m off to a conference on story-telling now, so here is a list of interesting articles to keep you occupied until I return.

An article on why you shouldn’t rely on Babel Fish – apparently it nearly caused a diplomatic incident.

Here’s a piece on language enrollments increasing. Thank you to Erika Dreifus for sending me this article!

This article is on the spread of English as a global language and how that might change the standard form of the language.

Some information on the influence of Irish on American slang.

This article is on titles, but it includes a paragraph on translation that shows how some authors are not understanding when it comes to challenges involved in translation. Here is quote:
“He even described receiving a letter from a Finnish translator, which said (in Heller's paraphrase): ‘I am translating your novel Catch-22 into Finnish. Would you please explain me one thing: what means Catch-22? I didn't find it in any vocabulary. Even assistant air attaché of the USA here in Helsinki could not explain exactly.’ Heller added: ‘I suspect the book lost a great deal in its Finnish translation.’´

Not too surprising – Americans are reading less, as this article discusses.

Unfortunately, the last two speakers of a dying language won’t speak to one another.

Finally, this article discusses translation in English-speaking countries. It says:
“In Germany 13% of books are translations. In France it's 27%, in Spain 28%, in Turkey 40% and in Slovenia 70%, but in Britain and America the best estimates suggest that the fraction of books on the shelves which started off in another language is somewhere around two per cent…Translation is considered by many universities to be insufficiently significant or original to add lustre to an academic CV, while publishers routinely sweep evidence of translation off the covers of books.”

Name and Shame: Dealing with Problem Customers

I recently had an unpleasant experience with a customer. I rarely work with agencies, but not long ago I was contacted by an agency and invited to work on the Swedish and Danish parts of a large, multilingual project. Since I have trouble saying “no”, I agreed.

Before I started the work, I signed a contract. The agency had calculated the number of words and written how much I would get paid. The project itself was sent to me in an unusual program that makes it hard to count words, but I eyeballed the text and thought the amounts listed on the contract looked about right. So I signed.

Immediately, I noticed that a few sentences in the Swedish part were not Swedish, so I pointed this out several times to the project manager, who didn’t seem to understand or care. I translated the Swedish parts, ignored the rest, and everything seemed fine.

A week later, I got a new contract and was told to sign it. Suddenly, the price I was getting paid was close to one-half of what I had originally agreed to. I protested, explaining I had already signed a contract and agreed to a fee. Yes, I was told, but they had initially just estimated the number of words and now they had actually counted the words (not including the few ones that they only now figured out were not Swedish). So the original contract didn’t mean anything, as it had, they claimed, just been an estimate.

Of course at this point, I’d already submitted the translation, so it seemed that there was nothing I could do but agree to the new price (and, no, I didn’t feel like wasting my time counting all the words). But I strongly resented this tactic and felt that I was being cheated; I had followed my part of the contract, and now they were going back on what they had promised. What, then, was the point of having a contract?

This is one reason why I don’t like working with agencies, but even direct customers sometimes try to change fees after they have received the translated text. Some translators ask for payment (or partial payment) upfront, to avoid these kinds of situations, but often assignments are expected back quite quickly, which means the translator doesn’t have the time to wait for a check to clear or a transfer to show up in their bank account before starting the job.

It is a difficult to find an ideal solution to such situations; one thing we translators could do is to publicize the names of problem customers, both so our fellow translators don’t get burned as we have and also to shame these clients into treating their translators better.

Literary Translation Prizes Event at Waterstone's in Hampstead

Those of you in or near London might be interested in the following event at Waterstone's in Hampstead. If I lived closer to London, I certainly would go.

Literary Translation Prizes Event

Daniel Hahn (Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2007) chairs a discussion between winners and runners-up of three of this year's major literary translation prizes:

Sarah Ardizzone (née Adams) - WINNER - Scott Moncrieff Prize for French translation(for her translation of Faïza Guène's 'Just Like Tomorrow'). Cultural journalist and translator of many beautiful books for children, by Daniel Pennac and others.

Nick Caistor - WINNER - Premio Valle Inclán, for Spanish translation(for his translation of Dulce Chacón's 'The Sleeping Voice'). Translator of many of Spain and Argentina's leading writers, e.g. Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alan Pauls, Jose Saramago, Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Carlos Onetti, Rodolfo Fogwill, Manuel Vazquez Montalban.

Anthea Bell - RUNNER-UP - Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation(for her translation of Eva Menasse's 'Vienna'). Translator of the Asterix books (with Derek Hockridge) and many adult and children's authors e.g. W.G. Sebald, Cornelia Funke, Wladyslaw Szpilman, Hans Magnus Enzensberger & Stefan Zweig.

THURSDAY 15th NOVEMBER AT 7PM Tickets £3, available in person or on 7794 1098
Waterstone's 68-69 Hampstead High St. NW3 1QP

Educating the Consumer

This weekend, I had a rather gratifying experience. I was at the eye doctor and I began chatting with a salesman there who was helping me order new lenses for my glasses. He asked me what I do and I told him a bit about my research and about my work as a translator. He was curious about this and asked me more.

That led to a big discussion of what translation is, why people in English-speaking countries resist learning other languages or reading translated literature, and why translation is important, especially for children. This man offered me the platitude, “Children are our future,” and while a cliché, it is nevertheless true; translated fiction is essential because it gives children – our future – the opportunity to learn about other cultures and peoples. More knowledge is never a bad thing; my view is that if we all made an effort to learn about people from different backgrounds and in different situations, there would be more intercultural understanding and thereby fewer stereotypes and eventually less fighting.

The man told me that he often bought books for his girlfriend’s children but that he had never once thought to check if the books were translated and, if so, from what language, or even if they were about people from other cultures. And he had certainly never stopped to consider how those books might be translated and what agenda the authors, translators, publishers, librarians, and other adults might have in terms of writing, translating, publishing, or promoting those books. “Your research sounds interesting,” he told me. “This has really given me something to think about.”

So my day was a success, not necessarily because I finally ordered my long-needed new lenses, though that was also good, but because I had the chance to educate a consumer on the importance of translation and to make him a more aware reader and purchaser of books. And who knows? Maybe he’ll mention our conversation to other people and they, too, will start to think about all this.

A Round-Up of Articles

Once again I’ve noticed quite a few articles of interest of late.

Here is a piece on translation software from the Wall Street Journal.

This interview with Pierre Bayard from the New York Times discusses reading.

An article from The Hindu looks at an anthology of short fiction from South India and discusses translation in India.

This BBC article on interpreting is from a few years ago, but is nevertheless worth reading.

An interview with lexicographer Erin McKean provides insight into a career working with dictionaries.

Wicked Stepmother Tongues

I saw this interesting blog post on using “stepmother tongues”, i.e. on people who write in or translate to a language other than their native one.

I have worked on translations to Swedish with native Swedish speakers, but I doubt I would ever want to be completely responsible for any jobs to Swedish, because it is not my native language and I know there are things I would miss or be unable to translate as well as I could when working to English. I turn down such assignments when asked to take them on, explaining why. Likewise, I regularly write articles and essays in Swedish, but I would probably not want to write fiction in any language other than English. You just have a different feel for your mother tongue than you do for your stepmother tongues.

Some rare people are true bilinguals and can write in or translate to more than one language equally well. And some people do eventually feel comfortable and confident working in a language other than their native one. The post mentions Samuel Beckett and Milan Kundera as examples; Vladimir Nabokov is another one, as is Elias Canetti, though he did learn German from a fairly young age.

But I confess that I am suspicious when people profess “true fluency” in a multitude of languages and take on assignments requiring them to translate both to and from their native language. Many people do have stepmother tongues, but sometimes those stepmothers can be wicked and can make us think we are better at them than we actually are.

A Blog Update

The old archive by category has been taken away and in its place, there is now a clearer and more organized system of finding everything by label. See on the left, below the various links. This will make it easier for you to find the topics that interest you. Incidentally, feel free to email me with ideas for or comments on the blog.

Just Say…A) Yes or B) No

It’s time for me to come clean about my biggest problem as a freelancer – saying “no”. I confess that I am terrible at it. I have a lot of energy and I manage to get many things done, and that combined with my desire to please makes me accept many of the projects people offer me, no matter how much else I have going on in my life. When a customer contacts me about a job that I know I have the skills for, I tend to just say “yes,” even if I know I have many other things to do or if I have planned to take a day off.

Some other freelancers I’ve spoken to have mentioned that they have a similar problem. After all, since most of us freelancers support ourselves with the income we bring in from our work and since we never know if assignments might stop coming in, we tend to take on jobs when they are offered. We worry that if we say “no” to a customer now, that person will find another translator and never return to us, and thus we will have lost more than just the one assignment. Friends and relatives of mine who are not freelancers do not understand what it is like to not have a steady paycheck, and these are the people who always say to me, “But it’s so easy to say “no.” Just do it!” I can point out, though, that this concern about having a steady income is in fact what stops many wannabe-translators from achieving their dreams.

I’ve been working on improving this bad habit of mine. On my recent birthday, for example, a customer I’ve done editing for before asked me to edit an entire book within a 24-hour period. Obviously, that was a ridiculous assignment anyway, and I told the company in question that my professional pride would not allow me to accept editing a book so quickly since I knew it was not possible to do a good enough job given the time constraints, but I also reminded myself that I had promised myself a day off for my birthday, and that I had to turn down the job for that reason as well.

The next day, however, I was back to my usual behavior, and I accepted a translation job and an editing job, though I knew I really did not have the time, and that by taking on that work, I was ensuring that I would not have any time for pleasure reading for the next week or so.

The only situations in which I confidently turn down assignments are if I know I do not have the knowledge or qualifications necessary for a particular job or if the potential customer refuses to pay a reasonable fee or in any other way treats me disrespectfully. When it comes to my own priorities, however, they tend to come last.

So, I ask you other freelancers: When do you say “no” to assignments? How do you do it? And have you noticed whether clients you say “no” to in regard to one particular job still ask you to do other work for them?

I know many of us would benefit from saying “no” more often, but somehow my “no”s tend to turn into “yes”es.

No Surprises: Once Again, People Prove Not to Understand Translation

This article suggests that a county council in England is using language students to do translations as a way of increasing business for companies in their region. What is upsetting is that the Norfolk County Council seems to believe that just because some students have done well in foreign language courses in high school, they are able to translate to that language or write documents directly in the language. Clearly, this is yet another case of people not understanding what translation is or what skills are involved.

In the article, a communications manager is quoted as saying, “Students need to understand that having good, relevant language skills can add value to their CV, and are just as important as their technical and other academic skills. It’s all too easy for those skills to lie dormant and only be brought out when ordering a meal on holiday!”

Of course this is true, but having language skills alone is certainly not enough to make a successful translator, as has been mentioned many times on this blog before.

I am sure there are some talented students involved in this project and maybe one day some of them will even become translators. In the meantime, however, I hope businesses will hire experienced, expert translators if they are serious about realizing their “true business potential” and increasing their business abroad.

In Praise of Excellence, or, How to Retain and Get More Customers

On this blog, I have given practical advice for getting started in translation, and how to get a freelance translation business going is probably the most common question people ask me. But it is not enough to set out your shingle and call yourself a translator; you also have to ensure that you get a steady stream of assignments. And that means that you need to make sure you get new customers.

I have found that word-of-mouth is really the best method for getting new customers. People are more likely to accept a recommendation from a friend or colleague than they are to be convinced by advertising. But in order for customers to recommend you to other people, you must do an excellent job. So how can you be a successful translator?

Here are a few tips from my years as a freelance translator. I think this method has been working, since nearly all of my assignments come from regular customers or people they have recommended me to (who often in turn become regulars, too). I do not actively advertise and I no longer spend time signing up with translation agencies or contacting potential direct clients. The “only” thing I consistently do is the best work possible.

First of all, it is vital to keep your language skills fresh. Just because you have taken courses or have at some point lived in the country where the language you translate from is spoken does not mean that you are still perfectly fluent. And sometimes you can even forget things in your native language (I certainly have been embarrassed to experience situations when I remember a word in Swedish, but not in English!). To combat this language-slippage, read widely in both the source and text languages, across as many genres as you can. Read books and online newspapers, and even participate in chat groups. The style of writing and the choice of vocabulary varies according to who is writing and for what purpose and what audience, so any texts you read can help refresh or update your language skills, and can also inspire you when it comes to how you write.

Besides reading texts, I also make a point of learning new words in both English and Swedish. Building your vocabulary is both interesting and helpful.

Also, try to regularly speak both languages, since even if you work primarily with the written word, speaking practice can positively influence your reading and writing. Except in certain circumstances, you probably can not live in a country where both (or all, if you have more than two) your languages are regularly spoken. That means it is up to you to find a way to practice hearing and talking. I’m lucky in that my partner is Swedish. We used to have a schedule in which we spoke Swedish for two weeks and then switched to English for two weeks and so on, since that way we each had an opportunity to use our mother tongue, which is important for us both personally and professionally. At this point, we haven’t spoken English in a very long time, but I do get to speak English with people at the university and when I am out, since I live in an English-speaking country. For people who do not have the asset of having a more or less built-in language partner, find some people in your area who speak the language in question and try to plan occasional get-togethers. This need not be formal; having coffee once a month and chatting in Gaelic or Tagalog or Italian can be enough.

But making sure you are fluent in both source and target languages isn’t all that you need in order to retain customers and impress them with your skills. There are certain personal qualities that have an impact too.

You should be curious and willing to learn new things, since many jobs will require that you do at least some research. Translation is not a matter of just looking up words in the dictionary; for many assignments, I have spent quite a bit of time reading other texts, searching the internet, or talking to experts or other translators, all for the goal of getting more information about the topic the text is about. And do not be afraid to ask questions of your client or other people. You can not do a good job if something about the document or the assignment confuses you or is unclear. You are definitely not stupid if you ask a question, though some people seem to feel it proves they are not intelligent enough for the job; on the contrary, it shows that you are intelligent enough to know when you need help. Doing it alone doesn’t mean much if you have done it incorrectly.

You should also be thorough. It is amazing how many people do not reread their work, leaving careless typos or other errors in the text. Edit the text before you send it off. Do not complain that it is boring to proof-read or that you don’t have time; it is a part of your job. I always compare the source and target texts after I have translated and then I read the target text again to check how it sounds in English. I do each of these things at least once; if I make any changes while doing them, I reread the text yet again. In other words, I edit until I feel the text is as good as it can be. It takes time, but it is worth it.

And speaking of time, an essential quality is punctuality. Always, always, always turn your work in on time, barring an extreme event such as a computer problem or an accident. If possible, give the translation to the client early. When I estimate how long a job will take me, I try to add on an extra few hours or days, depending on the type of assignment, to cover for particular situations or for anything unexpected happening. For example, about a month ago, one of my hard drives crashed, and that took some time to deal with, but not a single one of my projects was delayed because of it. There was no need for me to write embarrassing emails to customers about how I couldn’t do their work because I had a computer issue, since I had already estimated in a little extra time for my jobs (and also because I never wait until the last minute to start an assignment). Some people also like to estimate more time around holidays or in the busy seasons, since they know they will get more work in or have other activities, and they want to have room to prioritize. Usually, of course, the unexpected does not happen, and then you will be able to send the customer the work early, which tends to make them grateful. But don’t estimate that a job will take you two weeks when you know it will only require a few hours; that just makes you look bad, and it may even prevent you from getting assignments. Schedule reasonable deadlines and keep to whatever timeline you have agreed to.

A related point is to respond to all phone calls or emails from clients in a timely fashion. I try to reply within a few hours, or one day at the most. If I am out of town, I have an automated response set up on my email that lets them know when they can expect me to reply. It is annoying for customers if they have asked you to translate a text but you take a long time to reply; since then they don’t know whether you are available or not or even whether you have started translating the text without confirming the price and deadline with them, they may just decide to ask someone else. And if that someone else does a good job, the customer may go to that person for the next assignment, too.

In all your dealings with customers, be polite but firm. Customers may need to be educated about what translation is, but do so as politely as you can. If you snap or shout or send an angry email, you will likely lose the customer and he or she will ignore whatever point you were trying to make, too. Yes, customers sometimes complain about things for no reason, or act as though they are the language experts and not you. If their requests or comments are out of line, explain why and stand up for yourself, but don’t get yourself too worked up about it because it doesn’t help matters and it causes unnecessary stress for you, too. In certain situations, you will find that in fact you are better off without a particular customer. Remember, if you do good work and are polite, you are worth decent pay and respectful treatment from clients, and if you do not get that, move on to jobs from elsewhere.

Does this all seem obvious? Well, yes, it does. However, it is surprising how many people don’t seem to follow these suggestions. I know translators, for example, who see no reason why they should keep up their speaking skills in the source language, or who think project managers or end customers will edit the translation and they therefore don’t have to. I have also talked to people who are rather lax about deadlines or who don’t know how to plan their time. And I’ve heard stories about translators who argue with their customers or don’t let them know when they are going out of town. It is true that we translators offer a necessary service; it is not true that that means we can treat our customers and their documents any way we want. There is a lot of competition out there, so it behooves us to do the best job we can and to be polite, time-conscious, and careful while doing so.

Strive for excellence and I believe you’ll find that customers who care about their texts (i.e. customers who don’t just care about getting the job done as cheaply and quickly as possible) return to you again and again, and recommend you to others as well.

Translation in Novels

Over the weekend, I read Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing’s The Summer Before the Dark. I can’t say I felt too drawn to her writing, but I’m not going to write a review of it here anyway. What is interesting is that the first section of the book I chose happened to mention translation (well, actually, interpretation), and I had some definite issues with how our field was portrayed.

The main character, Kate Brown, is good with languages and her husband agrees on her behalf for her to fill in as a conference interpreter for a few weeks one summer. First of all, though she interprets at meetings, her job is always described as “translator”. Readers of this blog, of course, know the difference between a translator and an interpreter.

Also, Kate Brown is very well-paid; she earns enough from what probably amounts to no more than two months of work to be able to buy designer clothes, go to a fancy hairstylist, travel in Turkey and Spain, stay at an expensive hotel in London, and then still have enough to live on in a rented room in London for more than a month. Are any of you interpreters doing that well?

Finally, after working as an interpreter (not a translator!) for only a short while, Kate Brown’s boss tells her that she is wasting her talents as an interpreter and should instead work as an…(wait for it!)…administrator! That’s right, since you don’t need any talents or skills to be an interpreter (or translator), even though you are apparently very highly paid (to be fair, Mrs. Brown does earn more money as an administrator, but she still got a good salary as an interpreter). Maybe I’m not a good translator, since no one has suggested I go into administration instead!

Besides getting annoyed at all this, Lessing’s novel also made me wonder about how translators (or interpreters) are described in other novels. You’d like to believe that novelists would do research before writing about a field they don’t know much about, but did Lessing? Do you know other novels or short stories that feature translators or interpreters? If so, how are they portrayed?