Authors and Translators

This is a great new website dedicated to translators and their authors.

Medieval Hebrew Poetry Translated into English

I originally published this review in the Wales Arts Review.

Into the Light: The Medieval Hebrew Poetry of Meir of Norwich

introduction by Keiron Pim, translated by Ellman Crasnow and Bente Elsworth

“Exalted Lord, cherub-borne on high,/in your created heavens/you inspire awe.//My Lord is mighty to uphold./It befits us to serve him/for he is a holy God.” (p. 50)

So wrote Meir ben Eliahu in the late thirteenth century in his long poem “Who Is Like You?” And indeed Meir “serve[s]” this “holy God” through his poetry. He closes the poem by asking “Who is like you among the gods?” (p. 84)

One might ask who is like Meir among the poets.

Not much is known about Meir. He was a Jew in Norwich (or Norgitz, as the Jews called the city) during the Middle Ages, and lived through the expulsion of the Jews from  his town and from England at the behest of King Edward I in 1290. As Keiron Pim, a writer who put in motion the translation and publication of Meir’s long unknown poetry, puts it in his introduction to this bilingual edition of poems, in his work, “Meir captures the Norwich Jews’ psychological tumult: the oscillation between hope and despair, devotion and doubt, pride and humiliation; the infighting, the confusion, the terror. He catalogues his people’s predicament in ‘the land of the heavy-hearted and exhausted’, where they are scorned and labour under an ever-heavier yoke.” (p. 13)

You can forgive Meir for sounding angry and defiant in turns in his poems (as in “His foe will meet him in his filth/with the rod of his oppressor,/only evil lurking, in warp or woof.” (p. 38)). But despite his justified pain, he still “steadfastly/ declare[s] the kindness of the Lord./We, his beloved, trust in Yahweh/and in his holy servant, Moses.” (p. 84)

This work is important both because of the quality of the writing itself and also for what it can tell us about a period in time that is quite distant from today and about which not much is known. As Pim writes, “Meir’s is the only confirmed Anglo-Jewish poetic voice known from the far side of that lengthy hiatus [i.e. from 1290 until 1656, when Jews were readmitted to England] to describe the social conditions of the time. It is of considerable historical and cultural value.” (p. 10)

This publication includes 16 short poems and four long ones. The original Hebrew – complete with vowels – is printed alongside the English translations by Ellman Crasnow and Bente Elsworth (the former has worked on Walt Whitman and the latter has written textbooks on Danish and also translated poet Michael Strunge from Danish to English). The book might appear scholarly, given the historical context, the detailed introduction by Pim, the note from the translators, and the other paratexts, such as explanations of some of the poems and the poetic features, but in fact it is a work that is for any audience.

In many ways, the poetry feels fairly modern. For example, Meir writes, “Afire with longing for the rains of Love,/here I am, thirsty in my inner heart;/with dew drops of desire the folk are fed,/I too, perhaps, will sip a lover’s cup.//My true Love threatens; faith shrivels in drought,/withers, like reeds, from want of water./O sprinkle upon it healing balm/that impure man may be made clean.” (p. 90) Although Meir often refers to his god an dhis faith in his work, the romantic overtones might remind a reader of Rumi, and surely these sentiments are ones that many can relate to.

The final lines of Meir’s poetry are “Take pleasure in my precious meditations,/these songs of exultation and of awe.” (p. 118) A reader doubtlessly does take pleasure from Meir’s writing. 

A Round-Up of Articles

Here’s a round-up of recent articles on translation or related topics.

In this article, some authors pick their favourite translated children’s books.

This piece looks at long words.

I’m a fan of the apostrophe, so my mother sent me an article on just that topic. As the author points out: “How would you distinguish between my brother’s wives and my brothers’ wives ? Between The military claims we’re wrong and The military claims were wrong ?” My students sometimes say apostrophes don’t matter, but clearly they do.

Here’s one on neologisms.

This is a piece on the translator as advocate.

And finally, one on translation mistakes.

Break

We had the BCLT summer school a few weeks ago and it’s been a busy summer generally, so it’s time for me to decompress a bit before getting ready for the new academic year. See you back here soon and have a good August!

What Do You Learn from Studying Translation?

Obviously, people get a wide range of things from a BA, MA, or PhD program in translation, or even from just taking a class or two in translation. You can improve your language skills, you can learn about translation theory and its application to or influence on practical translation work, you can make contacts, you improve your writing and editing abilities, you can learn to analyze texts in a new way, and so on.

But recently, I had the chance to ask some of our MA students in translation how they’d changed or developed over the course of the year and what they’d learned about translation, and their answers were fascinating. There were a number of different replies and they had the variety one would expect, covering some of the things mentioned above. However, there was one response that every single student gave.

All the students said they’d entered the program thinking that translation was just about equivalence and they thought there was always a right or wrong way to translate a text. But over the course of the year, they said, they learned that translation is much more complex than that, and that translation is a broader task and field than they’d realized. They laughed at how naïve they’d been and said how interesting it was to learn about many different strategies and approaches for translation. They said they translated more thoughtfully now, not just picking the first word or phrase that came to them, but really considering a range of options before deciding on one.

It was amazing to hear that they all had this in common and that reminded me how worthwhile all the time and effort we put in to our teaching us. This shows how much you can develop over just a few months or a year, and how radically your ideas on a topic can change.

Translated Children’s Books

One of my PhD supervisors sent me this article, which talks about how there aren’t enough translations of children’s literature to English.

I firmly believe children should have access to works from all over the world and that this would be beneficial to them. I’ve been dismayed when talking to some publishers, as they’ve told me that children “can’t understand foreign people” or “don’t want” to read about “others”. It’s the adults who underestimate children and who are prejudiced in this case.

Here’s a quote from the article:

"Children need to read the best books by the best writers from all parts of the world," [author David] Almond said. "Of course they do. But the plain fact is that there is very little translated children's fiction published in the UK, and our children are missing out."

His comments coincide with the launch of a new imprint by Pushkin Press that will focus on international children's books – "a bold venture", according to Almond.

Pushkin Press plans to publish a best-selling Danish series about the adventures of a boy called Vitello. The series has been compared to the Horrid Henry books. It is also looking at a fantasy series by two librarians described as the French Harry Potter. The makers of the Twilight films have already bought the film rights.

Percentages

I’ve been used to saying that only 2-3% of all books published each year in English are translations, but according to this article, the number is now 4.5%. It’s a small increase, but it’s one worth celebrating. I hope the percentage gets even higher!

Working for Free

I wouldn’t usually promote working for free unless it was strictly for charity, but this site does sound interesting, especially for those just starting out.

Someone from Webflakes contacted me to tell me about it. She wrote: “Webflakes is a new lifestyle site that translates international content from leading bloggers worldwide via a community of  volunteer translators. Having just launched, Webflakes exposes English readers to influential international bloggers whose point-of-view reflects their unique cultures in categories such as wine, food, fashion, design, and architecture. The community of  translators are the heart of the operation at Webflakes as they utilize their skills to remove the language barrier while also raising funds for global charities in the process.”

Personally, I don’t have the time to do work for free unless it’s for a charity or other organisation/individual that I have chosen and have strong feelings about, and I do also worry about translators (or non-professionals who are acting as translators) being taken advantage of it, but it’s worth looking at this and similar sites.

When NOT to give up the PhD

Last winter, I wrote a post about giving up on a PhD. There were a lot of comments on Thesis Whisperer in response to that post, and it seems to have been a topic many could relate to. So I thought it was worth exploring a little further. Here, then, I want to talk about those times when you might feel rather low about your studies, but when you ought to be careful about making the decision to quit.

The question is: how can you differentiate between situations that suggest you should quit and those that might feel that way but don’t actually signal quitting time? And if it’s the latter, what should you do?

If you know for sure that you want to work in academia or in another research field, then you probably need to find a way of pushing on with your PhD. Not only do you need the PhD just because it’s usually a job requirement, but also because it shows that you are the sort of person who can do research on a high level and who can carry a major project to completion. Hence, the PhD is something you need to finish so you can move on with your life. Quitting won’t help you achieve your goals.

If you aren’t absolutely sure that you want a job in research but you haven’t ruled it out either, then you should consider completing so that you are giving yourself as many options as possible for your future. Some doctoral students don’t know what they want to do next, which is fine, but then you do need to keep your options open. Again, then, you might not want to quit.

If you want to go into a field that doesn’t require a PhD, but you know you could earn a higher salary or would have more opportunities to develop your career with a PhD, then you need to make a decision for yourself about whether the additional year/s and potential pain of the doctoral programme is worth that extra money or positions. For some people, it is worth it, while for others, they’d rather take a lower salary and leave behind the stress of their studies.

And, of course, if you want to have a career in a field completely unrelated to your PhD research or if you don’t want a career at all, then that’s something to think carefully about as well. You might find that you want to show yourself (and your friends/relatives) that you can carry out a project on a very high level and can get a PhD. You might just really want the pleasure of the title “Dr” or the status that can come with it. If either of those scenarios is the case, quitting probably isn’t the best option (then again, as I said in the last post, I’m not convinced that doing a degree just for the title is the best way to spend a few years of your life).

So what should you do if you’re currently not engaged by your research and you’re tempted to quit but you suspect that quitting isn’t the best idea?

The obvious first step is to talk. Talk to your supervisor/s, your colleagues, your family, your friends, and possibly your therapist. You need to get other people’s insight into what’s happening and what you can do. It could be that your supervisor think you’re taking the wrong tack; perhaps a shift in approach or methodology is what you need. Maybe you’re teaching too much and you’re left with no energy for your research, so you can arrange to have a lighter teaching load for the next term. Maybe you have too many hobbies and you’re not following a clear schedule for your research, and since you’re not accomplishing much, you feel upset about your research. In that situation, you need to work out a new schedule and learn to prioritise. Maybe you’re having a problem with your partner or your children but you’re avoiding it, so that’s causing you to blame your research for you feeling depressed.  Sorting out issues at home should take precedence then. Maybe you’ve recently lost a friend or relative, and you just need time to grieve before you can focus again. And so on.

For many people, feeling unhappy about their research is in fact caused by problems elsewhere in their lives and/or the lack of progress with their research is due to having little energy or low concentration levels. Take some time to talk to other people and to think about what is going on in your life. The problems you think you’re having with your PhD may not actually have that much to do with your research after all, and dealing with those other issues first may have a positive knock-on effect for your studies.

Also, as I said in my previous piece, there are times for all of us when we lose our research mojo. This is not a reason to give up on the PhD. Rather, it’s worth remembering that this is a temporary situation, and that there are ways of dealing with (taking a brief holiday, finding a new hobby, reading for pleasure, spending time with relatives/friends, meditating, going to a museum or a play or a concert, concentrating on teaching, even focusing on another part of the research project). We all need breaks and academics are particularly prone to not taking them because of our workaholic natures (yes, I’m generalising here), so if you’re feeling less than enthusiastic about your work, a strong likelihood is that you just need to do something different and to shift your attention for a little while.

Again, quitting really can be the best choice for some students. But before you make that decision, consider both other factors and also what you want to do after the PhD. It may turn out to be the case that you do want and/or need to complete the PhD, but that a short break or other solutions, such as marital counselling or a different schedule, will help you find your enthusiasm again.

Gulp and Translation

There are lots of reasons to love Mary Roach’s fascinating and funny books. But as a translator, one that I appreciate is that she employs translators and interpreters when needed in the course of her research and – and this is the part where she differs from many other writers – she actually mentions this and sometimes even gives their names in her work.

I really enjoyed her most recent book, Gulp, and I liked it even more when I noticed her references to translators. Who knows? Maybe she’ll even write a book on language and/or translation at some point!

Event Factory

I don’t quite know how to describe Renee Gladman’s novel Event Factory, but it is fascinating, especially for those of us interested in language. The protagonist travels to Ravicka, a city-state (that I somehow imagined looking a bit like San Marino) where the language is a combination of words and movements. For example, at one point she wants to apologize, but has trouble “recalling the “turns” I needed to perform my apology…I went through pareis several times, but always tripped up on the same move and had to start over again. You cannot skip ahead, or you’ll be saying something entirely different. I wanted to say, “When you are a visitor to a place, especially one such as Ravicka, it is difficult to remain stationary. The landmarks call out.” But I could not get my body to say “landmark” versus the “shipyard” it kept performing.” (p. 29) Her inability at times to communicate echoes the confusion many travelers feel when in a new place, where a different language is spoken and a different culture is the background. As the main character says, “If only travelling were about showing off your language skills, if only it did not also demand a certain commitment of body communication, of outright singing or dancing—I think I would be absolutely global by now. In Ravicka, I was barely urban.” (p. 42) I think many of us forget that language does involve a certain amount of facial expressions and movements and we tend to focus on the meaning of words, although obviously Ravicka is an extreme (and made-up) example. It is worth reading Gladman’s novel not only for her poetic turns of phrase but also for her philosophical ideas about communication.

Translators Anonymous

Thanks to Daina for sending me the link to the funny Translators Anonymous blog.

US Dialects

Check out this amazing US dialect map. There’s lots of fascinating information included in it.

Call for Papers

You might be interested in this call for papers or in simply attending the conference: Crime in Translation Park Building, University of Portsmouth Saturday 9 November 2013 Plenary speakers: Dr Karen Seago (City University, London) Dr Yvonne Fowler (Aston University) A selection of papers will be published in Jostrans, issue 22, July 2014 The translation of crime fiction is all around us, from the current wave of Scandinavian and European crime novels, film and television to recent screen adaptations of classic crime fiction such as Sherlock Holmes. But it’s not only in fiction that translation meets crime. The police and the courts rely heavily on public service interpreters and translators. Translation itself is criminalised in various ways, e.g. in relation to copyright infringement, legal proceedings against translators of ‘problematic’ texts and various forms of piracy. The 2013 Portsmouth Translation Conference aims to bring the different facets of translation and crime together in an interdisciplinary one-day conference, allowing exchange of ideas between translators, criminologists, interpreters, literary scholars and translation researchers. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers and 60-minute practical workshops on any area connecting crime and translation or interpreting. We welcome approaches from practitioners as well as researchers. Topics may include (but are not limited to): The challenges of translating crime fiction Subtitling and dubbing thrillers Crime, translation and the law ‘True crime’ in translation The role of translation and interpreting in criminal justice Translation by and for criminals Translation as a crime Translation and forensic linguistics The representation of translation and interpreting in crime fiction and film Enquiries and/or 300-word abstracts should be sent to translation@port.ac.uk by 15 June 2013

Yiddish and Hebrew

Last month, I was in Israel. So I thought it was appropriate to include some links here on Hebrew and Yiddish. Interestingly, I couldn’t find as many free options for these languages as I could for other tongues, but some of these links might be a start, and you can also check out some older posts on this blog for more on Yiddish and Hebrew.

Der Bay is a major online resource for Yiddish.

You can learn a little Yiddish here.

Shtetl has more info on Yiddish.

The Vilnius program is a well known one for learning Yiddish.

YIVO is, of course, the place to go for Yiddish.

Learn Hebrew using cartoons. It’s a very entertaining site!

Here is a free online course for learning Hebrew.

This site starts free, and then you can pay for more lessons.

And check out Ulpan for more Hebrew lessons online.

The Telephone Game in Translation

Here’s a silly game to entertain you: the telephone game in translation. You enter some text in English (or another language), then you watch as it gets translated back and forth between languages. Then you see what the text ends up as – it’s just like playing telephone/operator/Chinese whispers/whatever else you might have called it, except with multiple languages.

Yo, what’s up?

I’ve been the recipient of hundreds of emails from students over the years. Some of them have been quite polite and well-written, but quite a few are informal to the point where they are verging on the rude. And many are full of typos.

“Yo, what’s up?” was one of the most informal openings I’ve gotten, while “Hey” is the most common informal one.

“Hope your well” is a regular mistake I see. “im writting my essay about x” is also not an usual phrasing.

“Respond immediately” is a frequent demand, and often those who use it send me their email over and over (and over) again if I don’t reply within a few hours. If a student should happen to send me the email on a Friday night, I have many copies waiting for me Monday morning, with increasing exhortations stating how I “must” reply right away or the student will be upset or be unable to write the essay or do the reading. And yes, this often comes from students who are waiting until the last minute to do their work, though they’ve known about the assignments for weeks, if not months.

So I liked this guide to emailing your teachers, and I suggest students follow the tips.

Vote for Brave New Words

Once again, Brave New Words has been nominated as one of the best language blogs. Please vote! All you have to do is click a button. Thanks!

Asymptote

I recently discovered the journal Asymptote, which is dedicated to literary translation. As they say on their website, “Though a translation may never fully replicate the original in effect (thus our name, “asymptote”: the dotted line on a graph that a mathematical function may tend towards but never reach), it is in itself an act of creation.”

An intern for the magazine told me, “Not only do we offer the translations of these pieces, but we are happy to publish the originals, audio files of the original languages, and the translators’ commentaries where possible.” I think their approach to translation is fantastic, and I urge you to check the magazine out.

Picking up Hidden Meanings: Guest Post

I met Tim Lenton at a discussion I ran on translation and I thought he had some interesting ideas, so I invited him to write a guest post for the blog. Luckily, he agreed. Here it is:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that to attempt a proper translation, you need to be fluent in both the language of the original writer and the language you are translating into. Or is it?

Translation has fascinated me for a long time. I have been particularly intrigued by the difficulty of translating from Hebrew or Aramaic (sometimes via Greek) into English, which is a very different kind of language.

If you are looking at biblical translation, you have the additional problem of a few thousand years of cultural change added into the equation. Given the near-impossibility of translating contemporary poetry satisfactorily from one language to another – trying to convey the precise sense, the rhythm, the context and all the nuances – there doesn't seem much chance of getting those old biblical writings safely and securely into modern English.

Which is presumably why we have so many different translations of the Bible, though it doesn't explain why so many people appear to attribute infallibility not just to the Bible, but to the translations, especially if they are a few hundred years old and have the word James in the title.

I do not speak Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, but reading about the Aramaic language in particular led me to what I think is an understanding of the way some of the New Testament was written. To many this will be an arrogant and laughable claim, and they may be right. But a feeling for language is as important as technical ability in it. My degree in German gave me something of that feeling for the way ideas were adopted into different languages.

I had long been aware that some idiosyncrasies of Greek (for instance, the continuous present tense) had not been conveyed into English in most translations. English people (like most modern Europeans) tend to look at things in a cause-and-effect way, so the New Testament  injunction to "Ask and you shall receive" leaves us looking around for what has not been delivered, whereas the meaning of the original is, I believe, "Be an asking sort of person and you will receive things", or to turn it around, "If you don't ask, you don't get".

But a book called Prayers of the Cosmos, by Neil Douglas-Klotz, which I discovered by chance in a friend's library on Holy Island, opened my eyes to the huge differences between the Aramaic and English way of looking at things – in particular how Aramaic words (like Hebrew) include a deep reservoir of roots and history in a way that just doesn't seem to happen in English unless you delve deeply and academically into the derivations of words.

I was intrigued to discover, for instance, that the Aramaic word for prayer (slotha)also means setting a trap, and the word for bread (lahma) also means understanding. This is highly figurative language which allows your mind to expand on what is on the page – roam around it, so to speak, to pick up all the hidden meanings. English, though wonderful in its way, is not like that.

One of the things that Douglas-Klotz did was expand on the Lord's Prayer, bringing out of the original Aramaic all the subtleties and allusions. But he did this at great length. I felt I would like to have a go at producing a usable Lord's prayer based on the Aramaic words. And so I did.

Ah, you may say, this is not a translation: this is a paraphrase. And of course you're right in the strict sense. But translation is bringing something across, and as Douglas-Klotz had brought something across to me, I wanted to bring it further across and add my own feeling for the language to it.

Is it possible to have a genuine feeling for a language you don't speak? I think it is, but then I would, wouldn't I? Here is the "translation" I ended up with:

Our Father, who is throughout the universe.

let your name be set apart and holy.

Through your kingdom and counsel,

let your desire and delight be,

as in the universe, also upon earth.

Give us this day bread for our necessities

and food for our understanding,

and free us from our offences, as also

we have freed our offenders.

And do not let us enter our temptation,

or make do with worldliness,

but set us free from error and immaturity.

For the kingdom, the power and the song

belong to you

from ages to ages.

Sealed in faithfulness.

What makes this worth doing? Is it just new words for the sake of it? Not at all.  This version gets rid of at least one wrong translation (the absurd "Lead me not into temptation") and breathes in some wider and deeper meanings.

For me, the word "delight" is important, because it presents God as benevolent, rather than as a despot. I wanted to include the idea "food for our understanding" in "our daily bread" and the Aramaic idea of immaturity and worldliness into the familiar but one-dimensional  "temptation". (The Aramaic also contains the idea of unripeness, but I decided regretfully that this could not be comfortably accommodated.) 

I also liked the word "song" as an expression of "glory", and "from ages to ages" better expresses the original than "for ever and ever".

Professional translators may regard this as amateurism of the worst kind. For me it was an exciting adventure, and one which has received a good response from those I have offered it to. Admittedly, they don't speak Aramaic either. But I'm not sure that matters.

Obviously I could not have done it without help from a genuine linguist in Douglas-Klotz, and he deserves most of the credit. He opened the door, and I went through it. Which is what doors are for.

Tim Lenton is a poet and former local newspaper columnist with experience of lecturing at the UEA. He has a BA (Hons) in German from Birkbeck College, London, is now retired and lives in Norwich with his wife, who is an education consultant. He has a website at www.back2sq1.co.uk.

Cooking the Books

I’ve received some emails asking me how I got into translating cookbooks and what sort of skills you need. As with other types of translation, food writing is a specialized field and just enjoying eating is not enough of a qualification.

But let’s say you do genuinely love food and would like to work with cookbooks and other texts. What kinds of things could you do to try to break into food translation?

--Learn as much as you can about food. Cook and bake a lot. Read food magazine and borrow cookbooks from the library and study their style (and try out their recipes). Take a course, if you can afford it. Even if you don’t take a class, make sure you learn about different cuts of meat, techniques, ingredients, and tools, as they vary tremendously.

--Write restaurant reviews. Yes, you can start with blog posts, especially if you do so on a blog that isn’t your own (i.e. if you have an editor). You should also try to get an article or two in local publications, and then work your way up to national ones, if possible.

--Do other sorts of food writing. For example, interview chefs. Write travel articles that mention restaurants. Publish your own recipes.

--You can also do food editing. If you work as a proof-reader, try to find jobs that allow you to edit cookbooks and other texts about food, such as guides to cities or countries or cultures.

--Start small in regard to food translation. If you’re at a restaurant with a badly translated menu, offer to edit it. If you’re at a restaurant without a translated menu, offer to translate it. If you do one or two of these for free, you have something to put on your CV, and you have gained experience and potential customers. Grateful restaurant-owners may even pay you, or at least offer you a free dish or glass of something tasty.

--Do other sorts of food translation. For example, translate restaurant reviews or restaurant websites. As with food writing, try to do as many types of food translation as you can. This helps you learn about different styles, and it will help you make contacts.

--Sign up with agencies and/or with translation organizations and list food as one of your specialties.

--Contact publishing companies and magazine editors and offer your services. Do likewise with restaurants.

--Don’t set your heart on only doing food translation. Most translators do a variety of texts, so be aware of that, and try to work in a few different fields.

Basically, you need to show that you have a lot of knowledge about food and about language. So the more you can do to prove this, the better.

Food translation is a lot of fun and it can be a challenge (not to mention a danger to your waistline). But to succeed, you need to take food as seriously as you would medicine, or finance, or literature, or anything else.

Literary Translation Events in Norwich and London

I have organised a literary translation reading in Norwich on 17 May at 4 pm in the Undercroft (under the market). You can hear short excerpts from texts that have never been translated to English before. All the translators are UEA staff or students. The reading is free. (See below for the poster, which was designed by my PhD student Alex Valente. Thanks, Alex!)

On 22 May, you can hear a talk by me in London at City University on Fallen Women, Moody Bitches, and Stupid Southerners: Language Usage in Thrillers and Their Translation. This will take place at 6.30 pm in Room AG22, College Building, St John’s Street, and it is also free, followed by a reception.

I hope you can make one or more of these events!

Translators and (Their) Authors

As you read this, I’m on my way to Tel Aviv to attend the Translators and (Their) Authors conference at Tel Aviv University. I’ll be speaking about Swedish author Gösta Knutsson, who also translated work by Lewis Carroll.

Besides the fact that the conference itself sounded interesting, I was also keen to go because I’ve only been to Jerusalem, and I loved it and wanted a chance to see more of Israel.

I hope some of you will be at the conference and, if so, I look forward to seeing you there.

Translators Without Borders

While most of us must generally do work that earns us a living, we can often donate our time and energy and maybe even some money once in awhile. It is important to give back to our communities whenever possible.

So I encourage you to sign up with Translators Without Borders. This way, you can take on the occasional volunteer translation job, knowing you are helping others. You can of course also contact a charity or other volunteer organization and offer your time and skills.

Volunteering need not be onerous; a few hours a month is enough and it's wonderful to feel that you are helping others.

A Round-Up of Articles

My colleague Jo Drugan, who also teaches translation, sent me this fascinating story about historical vocabulary and anachronisms. For translators, finding language that suits the context can often be very challenging, and may require research.

This is another article sent by a colleague, this time Kate Griffin, who also works for the British Centre for Literary Translation. Happily, this article discusses how translation is becoming more visible in the US in academia.

Research often suggests that knowing multiple languages is good for us, but this article states that speed-learning a language is good.

If you can read Swedish, this piece claims that “poets are dangerous as translators”.

And sticking with Scandinavia, if you a want a laugh, watch this video to learn some Danish.

Croatia via Iraq

I had never read a Croatian novel, though I’ve been to Croatia, until a few months ago. Here’s my review of that Croatian novel in English translation. The review was published in Wales Arts Review.

Our Man in Iraq

Robert Perisic, translated by Will Firth

202 pp., New York: Black Balloon Publishing, 2013.

Reviewer: B.J. Epstein

I must confess: as far as I can recall, Our Man in Iraq was the first book I’ve read that is set in Croatia. And what an introduction to the country it is.

Robert Perisic’s Our Man in Iraq is about Toni, a journalist who grew up in a rural village and now lives in Zagreb, the capital city, with his girlfriend, an actress whose fame is steadily growing. Besides dealing with his feelings of insecurity due both to being a country mouse as well as to having a partner who is suddenly more successful than he is, Toni makes the mistake of sneakily getting his boss to hire his Arabic-speaking cousin to be their newspaper’s reporter in Iraq. Unfortunately, Toni’s cousin Boris doesn’t seem terribly mentally stable, so Toni ends up ghost-writing Boris’s articles for him. Understandably, this eventually leads to Toni getting in trouble, especially when Boris stops communicating with his family and they fear that he’s been lost and go to the media about it.  Meanwhile, the war in Iraq rages and reminds the former Yugoslavians of the terrible war that they lived through, and the current war between the generations that they seem to be experiencing as well. Apparently Perisic is known as an anti-war writer in Croatia, and that comes through very clearly in this novel.

While this plot might sound like a strange combination of seriousness and slapstick, it actually works quite well. The subjects and styles shift, and you just have to give yourself over to the story. Our Man in Iraq explores topics ranging from journalism to good versus evil, from relationships to the effects of war. And in Firth’s translation, Perisic’s prose is often lovely and thought-provoking.

When Toni and his friend have returned to university after serving in the war, he finds that people’s attitudes towards them have changed, and their own attitudes have changed as well. “During this period the world fell apart. Nothing was permanent, authorities faded and people flinched before us. We realized that we belonged to a generation that had a moral advantage because it was defending all those old folks accustomed to the molds and models of socialism. Lost as they were, they patted us on the shoulder as if they were thanking us for something. We vocally despised socialism and they agreed with us on that. We despised their life’s experiences and they agreed with us on that too. We disdained all they’d done and stood for, and again they agreed with us. To leave no doubt that the future belonged to us, we rejected everything that until yesterday had been of any worth. They agreed with us on all that.” (p. 27) As one might expect, Toni too is later forced to confront the things he thought he stood for, and the choices he made, or thought he had.

As he puts it, “I’d fled to Zagreb and become a city boy; here I went to a thousand concerts, lived with an actress who played avant-garde dramas, I acted cool, and did everything right. The fear of someone thinking I was a redneck made me read totally unintelligible postmodernist books, watch unbearable avant-garde films, and listen to progressive music even when I wasn’t in the mood. I was terrified of everything superficial and populist. If something became too popular, I rejected it. Even in moments of major inebriation when I felt like singing a popular peasant song I stopped myself. I maintained discipline. But in vain. All at once they were breathing down my neck again. I thought I’d given them the slip, but now they’d encircled me, having used Boris as bait, and were closing in for the kill.” (p. 104)

You’ll have to read Our Man in Iraq to see if Toni breaks free or if he ends up trapped, or both.

I’m so pleased that more publishers are publishing literary translations, and that more of these translations are from languages other than French or German. It’s essential that we learn about other people, other cultures, and other “life’s experiences”, and fiction is one of the best ways to do this. Think of each translation as an Our Man in… book, so Our Man in Iraq serves as an Our Man in Croatia, letting us know a little bit about what is going on in Croatia. But of course we must remember that each translated text is only one story. We need many more translations so that we can get access to more stories. One can only hope that publishers such as Black Balloon will continue this important work.

Our Man in Iraq is in a sense about trying to control what is actually uncontrollable. “We try to make sure things don’t get out of control. There’s always that danger here on the slippery edge of the Balkans. Here we always squabble about what we’re allowed to enjoy and what not.” (p. 115-6) Whether those in the Balkans are allowed to enjoy Our Man in Iraq or not I can’t say, but those of us in English-speaking countries certainly can, and should.

Språktidningen

On my last trip to Sweden, I finally discovered Språktidningen, a fascinating magazine on language. I promptly bought and/or borrowed all the issues I could find.

In one issue, there was an article about the Romani language and how there are many words in it that are derived from Sanskrit, and most of them have to do with the basics of life, such as bread, yellow, water, wheels, and more. The article, which was by Per Westergård, also talks about the different names of the ethnic group. The big question when it comes Romani is whether it is “one language with different varieties or if it really is many different languages.” This is the same topic sometimes discussed regarding Swedish/Norwegian/Danish, among other languages.

In the same issue, I read an article by Nils Svensson on “uncreative writing”, or using the words of others. For example, Caroline Bergvall made a “compilation of the first three lines of Dante’s Inferno from the 47 English translations.”

In another issue, I read an article by Karin Westin Tikkanen about people who get tattoos with Latin phrases such as “memento mori” and “amor vincit Omnia”, and an article by Fatima Grönblad on code-switching, where people use two or more languages ​​in the same call. It was also interesting to read that research has shown that more Iranian mothers in Sweden speak Swedish with their children than Iranian fathers do, and it seems that “the benefits of using Swedish in everyday life - to integrate and achieve gender equality – take precedence for the women over their feelings about their mother tongue.”

In each issue, there are short reviews, news, discoveries, games, and questions and answers about language - both English and Swedish, interestingly enough. Then there is a column about people who work with language, such as a language consultant, a tweeter, a speechwriter and, yes, even a translator - in the issues that I got hold of, there were articles by Anders Bodegård, who translates from French and Polish to Swedish, and by Jan Stolpe, who translates from French and Greek to Swedish.

I really enjoyed this magazine and look forward to catching up on it on my next visit to Sweden. I recommend it to those of you who can read Swedish.

London Book Fair

It’s time for the annual London Book Fair. I don’t think I can go this year, but I urge those of you in the UK who can to do so. There are plenty of translation events (many organized by the BCLT), and it’s always great to meet fellow translators, writers, editors, publishers, and others.

Another thing I like about events such as the LBF is how you can almost do an ethnographic study there. The different countries (and different publishers and organizations) have very different stands, and the stands often reflect their culture. It’s fascinating to go talk to people from, say, Saudi Arabia, then Nigeria, then China, then Finland, then Mexico, and so on. It’s almost like travelling the world in just a few hours.

Links on Scotland

I noticed that I had a number of links to articles about Scotland, its language, and its culture, so I thought I’d combine them in one post.

Scotland is a gorgeous country, and I’ve really enjoyed the trips I’ve taken there. Gaelic is on the list of languages I’d like to learn one day.

The first article is on the language of the Picts.

Next, here is a piece on the death of a Scottish dialect.

Here is an an article that explores whether there is a formula for Scottishness (can there ever be a formula for any cultural identity?).

And if you want to learn Scottish Gaelic, you can check out this website or the tips on the BBC Alba site.

Break

I’m taking another short break from blogging while I head out of town over the spring vacation. I hope the articles I linked to in the last post will keep you busy while I’m gone. See you in a few weeks!

A Round-Up of Articles

Here are a few articles on language, literature, and translation.

The first one is an article about inventing languages. More specifically, it’s on John Quijada and his Ithkuil language.

For those of us who work on the Nordic languages, this piece, which is on whether English is a Scandinavian language, is particularly interesting. It lists a number of English words that are Scandinavian in origin, such as: “anger, awe, bag, band, big, birth, both, bull, cake, call, cast, cosy, cross, die, dirt, dream, egg, fellow, flat, gain, get, gift, give, guess, guest, hug, husband, ill, kid, law, leg, lift, likely, link, loan, loose, low, mistake, odd, race, raise, root, rotten, same, seat, seem, sister, skill, skin, skirt, sky, steak, though, thrive, Thursday, tight, till, trust, ugly, want, weak, window, wing, wrong.”

Next is an article about the 800 languages in New York City.

Here is a piece on legal language and translation.

Finally, here is an intriguing article on a whistling language. As the article says, “This method of communication, in which the Spanish language is replaced by two whistled vowels and four consonants, has a peculiarity perfectly suited to this landscape of deep valleys and steep ravines. It has the ability to travel up to two miles (3.2km), much further and with less effort than shouting. By the 1970s and 80s, there were only a few whistlers remaining, but at the end of the 90s there was renewed interest in silbo, in part due to an initiative to make it a compulsory subject at primary school.”

Verbs, Verbs, Verbs

Last month, I published a review of a fun book all about verbs, and I thought I’d post it here too.

Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch

Constance Hale

Gosh.

A book-reviewer.

Alas, no.

The proceeding sentences are all missing something, and for that reason, they’re not terribly informative or interesting. So what is it that is absent?

Yes, that’s right.

The verb.

Now you might be yawning at this stage, filled with half-forgotten and not very pleasant memories of English class and bewildering discussions about parts of speech. But hold on a moment. As Constance Hale points out in her enjoyable new book, Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch,  verbs are the “pivot point of every sentence” (p. 10). They “put action in scenes, show eccentricity in characters, and convey drama in plots. They give poetry its urgency. They make quotes memorable and ads convincing.” (p. 10)

The way each chapter in Hale’s book works is that she takes on a topic (voice or tense, for example), explains what is challenging about it (this is the “vex” of the title), demolishes a common belief about verbs (“hex”), encourages readers to get rid of a bad habit (“smash”), and educates readers about new things to try (“smooch”). She offers activities (“Try, Do, Write, Play”)  and uses quotations from both literary and popular writing to exemplify her ideas.

For example, in one vex, she explicates verbals, which “don’t change with time…don’t express voice…have no moods. They are bona fide verbs: they can be modified by adverbs and they can take objects and complements. But in sentences they don’t act like verbs.” (pp. 224-5) To demonstrate participles, she quotes Dickens’ depiction of Scrooge as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” (p. 227)

In a hex, she tells us to “reject the rule “Always use Standard English”” (p. 117), and she speaks up for the use of dialect, as in Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a Woman”. In another, she dismisses the idea that we shouldn’t use double negatives (pp. 96-7). In other words, don’t don’t. Got it?

One smash she offers suggests that long words can be too “pompous, highfalutin, and abstract” and she recommends avoiding “bequeath, commence, conjoin, interrogate, and remunerate” (p. 80). I personally don’t agree, because I think there are texts and situations where such words are needed – they presumably wouldn’t exist if they weren’t useful – but I do take her point that people sometimes try to write or speak in an unnecessarily complex way. In another smash, she discusses the challenges inherent in phrasal verbs, such as differ from and differ with (pp. 254-8).

Hale recommends the imperative – in other words, order such as “Just do it!” – in one smooch (p. 194), and nuance in another, by which she means in part understanding the difference between commonly interchanged words, such as careen, career and carom (p. 286-8).

The book comes with a number of appendices, such as recommendations for dictionaries, a list of irregular verbs (did you remember that the past tense of abide is abode, and did you know that tread becomes trod, which then becomes have trodden?), information on challenging words (what’s the difference between raise, raze, and rear, and when do you use behove?), and an analysis of the history of language. I would have appreciated an index, though.

This is definitely not the grammar book you might remember from your school days. Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch is easy to dip into at will, and it offers useful information, activities, and suggestions that will help any writer. Hale is an opinionated and witty guide to the weird and wonderful world of verbs.

Just buy it! Or don’t don’t.

Nordic Translation Conference (Again!)

It’s your last chance to registerfor the Nordic Translation Conference. It takes place 4-6 April and we’re almost out of spaces, which is in a way quite exciting (I’m glad there’s so much interest!).

The keynote speakers are scholars Andrew Chesterman, Riitta Oittinen, Ástráður Eysteinsson, and Anna Mauranen. The Nordic authors who will read from their work at the conference are Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Ninni Holmqvist, Morten Søndergaard,  Kristina Carlson, and Gaute Heivoll.

If you work with the Nordic languages, do come along!

Translation and Sex

Not long ago, I reviewed Tom Cutler’s book Slap and Tickle. Translation, as we well know by now, appears everywhere, including in relation to sex.

As Cutler points out, the bible has many sexual prohibitions and other discussions with sexual words. However, the “English translators of the Bible were a bit squeamish about some things”, as Cutler writes. In a section in Genesis, the original text said, “If now I have found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my penis, and deal kindly and truly with me”, but the English translators replaced “penis” with “thigh”. 

Cutler writes, the “ideal then being that if you were making a solemn oath your testicles would be in jeopardy if you bore witness. When your lawyer next uses the words ‘testament’, and ‘testify’, remember that he or she is using words with the same root as, ‘testicle’.” (all quotes from p. 32)

What Cutler is getting at here is that translators have a lot of power and can substantially change our ideas about a text (and laws), as well as make us forget etymology and connections between words.

Next time you think about or get near testicles or thighs, think about translation. Or, on second thought, maybe not…

Ethics and Translation

I think ethics is a huge issue when it comes to translation. As translators (or editor/publishers/readers of translations), we have a lot of different responsibilities, and many ethical issues to consider.

As many of you know, I teach in UEA’s MA program in literary translation. We tend to talk about ethics in class because, you know, it’s rather relevant to what the students want to do with their lives. One of the students (who shall, of course, not be named) in the past few years complained to me that we talked too much about ethics and that it actually had nothing to do with translation.

This student made this comment at the end of the academic year, when the cohort had spent quite a bit of time discussing issues such as translating for readers without much power or control (such as children or a minority group) or what to do when faced with potentially challenging situations (such as whether to take a job translating a porn film, or whether to agree to interpret for someone on trial, or how to handle the translation of a racist/anti-Semitic/otherwise prejudiced text, or even how to deal with a client who wasn’t paying).

I was genuinely shocked that a student who had spent a year in an intense MA program was arguing that ethics had nothing to do with their chosen career, and I was left feeling as though this person couldn’t have gotten much out of their studies.

What do you think about ethics and translation? Is it an important topic to discuss? What ethically sticky/challenging situations have you come across in your time as a translator?

Blog on Language

I recently discovered this blog on language and I’d definitely recommend it. Lots of interesting articles there.

Nordic Translation Conference

The second Nordic Translation Conference is going to take place in just a couple of months, on 4-6 April 2013 at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England (yes, the institution where I teach).

I’m really excited about the conference. This is the only international conference dedicated to the Nordic languages and literatures. The keynote speakers are scholars Andrew Chesterman, Riitta Oittinen, Ástráður Eysteinsson, and Anna Mauranen. The Nordic authors who will read from their work at the conference are Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Ninni Holmqvist, Morten Søndergaard,  Kristina Carlson, and Gaute Heivoll. Besides all that, the conference includes workshops, lectures, exhibits, and musical performances.

I hope some of you will attend. To do so, follow the link to register on the conference website. See you in April.

Translation and British History

Since I’ve lived in the UK for over six years now, I thought I ought to learn about British history. And when I was in the library, I just happened to see “British History for Dummies” on the shelf, so I grabbed it.

Interestingly – and not surprisingly – translation comes up as an issue through British history. For example, Alfred the Great, who lived in the ninth century, not only Beat the Vikings, but he also created legal codes, commissioned the writing of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, and got many important Latin works translated into Anglo-Saxon.

Then, King Henry VIII, who drastically re-shaped religion in England, also influenced translation, in particular of the bible. He had William Tyndale put to death for translating the New Testament into English, but then he distributed Miles Coverdale’s full translation to all parishes just a few years later.

But, of course, it was really King James I who got the bible translated into its best-known English format, which is generally referred to as the King James bible.

Did you know British history was so intertwined with translation?

Retranslating Children’s Literature

As you read this, I’m at a conference in Rouen, France, on retranslating children’s literature. I was intrigued by this conference because although there has now been more research on translating works for children, we aren’t discussing retranslating that much yet, and clearly how books are translated will change over time.

In the paper I’ll be giving, I will talk about how translations of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from English to Swedish were quite different between the 1940s and 1970s from the way they were before and after that period. So I think of those decades are a rather more conservative, protectionist time, and I’ll explain why.

If anyone else has researched retranslations, what have you found and why do you think that is? It’s a fascinating topic and I look forward to learning more about it.

Peirene Press

(This was originally published in the Wales Arts Review, but I think the publishing company is doing such interesting work that I wanted to post about it here too.)

For anyone who loves literature, Peirene Press is a publishing company you need to know about. Peirene, run by Meike Zeirvogel, focuses on contemporary European literature in translation, and all of its books are short enough to be read in just a few hours, although they will stay with you for much longer than that.

The first book I read that Peirene had published was Asko Sahlberg’s The Brothers, translated by the daughter -and-mother team of Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah. The first sentence drew me in: “I have barely caught the crunch of snow and I know who is coming.” (p. 7) As a reader, I immediately wanted to know where this was set and who was coming. We quickly learn that the setting is Finland and it is Henrik, the prodigal son of a rural family, who is returning to his mother and brother’s home. Henrik is not welcome or wanted, but this does not bother him. His return sets in motion a series of changes at the farm, and the person who vanquishes at the end of the book is not who we expect, plus there are startling revelations along the way about this somewhat odd, tight-lipped family.

The novella is told from many different points of view, which allows the reader to get insight into the different characters and to get varying perspectives on what is happening. In a way, this is ideal in such a short book, because it helps to get true thoughts and feelings and voices across quite quickly, although I didn’t always feel that the women’s voices were as authentic as the men’s.  The language is sparse here, with no one – whether character or author – saying more than is strictly necessary, creating a solemn formality that suits the book’s plot. There is a distinctly religious undertone to the story, which helps situate it in a cold, Protestant country. As Peirene puts it, “[t]hese books lend themselves to comparison and give insight into trends from the European literary scene.” I think The Brothers definitely invites that.

The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke, translated by Jamie Bulloch, is quite different. A monologue by an unnamed female character, The Mussel Feast seems at first to be a simple enough tale: a mother and her two children prepare mussels to celebrate the man in the family’s promotion. However, over the course of their preparations, and as they wait for their husband/father to return home for this feast, many other stories come to light, and slowly the characters and their supposedly “proper” family are revealed to the reader. The absent person – the husband/father – is the heavy presence, the tyrant who is both unlovable and unable to love.

Vanderbeke’s book is breathless but unrushed, sad and moving and funny all at once. It questions what makes a family, and discusses how we are all different people in different situations. The mother and the children in this novella “switch modes”, “letting their hair down” when their husband/father is away, and trying to go into “wifey mode” or good-child mode when he is home (pp. 18-22), but they do not always succeed. And this forces readers to question their own mode-switching, and their own attempts at being something other than what they truly are. The ending of Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast is just right, leaving a mystery for readers to ponder.

These two examples show the variety of Peirene’s publications in regard to style and subject, and they also reveal what they have in common: an interest in what it means to be human. Although I don’t know Finnish or German, I can say that these two books worked well in English while simultaneously seeming to retain the tone and feel of the source culture.

The way Peirene works is that there is a theme each year and then three short books that fit in that theme – whether it is “the small epic” or “the female voice” or “the turning point” – are published during the course of that year. Peirene only chooses authors who are “award-winners and/or bestsellers in their own country,” which lets English-speakers experience the best that literary worlds in other cultures have to offer. The publisher also follows the current literary trend of allowing subscriptions, which is a lovely idea, and is also quite affordable with prices starting at £25 for a one-year subscription.

Peirene/Pirene is the name of a fountain in Greek mythology where poets would go to get inspired. The press likewise offers inspiration in the form of compact, enjoyable works that make you think. I couldn’t put down either of the books until I had finished them; the stories urged me on while opening new worlds to me. What could be better than that?

Go ahead: drink from the Peirene fountain.