Reading the World 2007: E-Panel of Literary Translators

As many of you know, it is now Reading the World month (for some great attention, wander over to Scott's Conversational Reading throughout June - currently he's got a weeklong interview with Chad Post running), and I'll be doing many things.  The following should be the first of three or four e-panels of literary translators.  I'll also be reviewing many translated titles and looking at individuals stories, poems, and essays from the latest issues of Absinthe:  New European Literature.  I hope you enjoy.

The following is an E-Panel of 4 literary translators who have made it possible for those of us reading in English to enjoy works from authors we otherwise would never have had the chance to enjoy.

Howard Curtis

Katherine Silver

Paul Olchvary

Richard Jeffrey Newman

Dan:

Hello, and thanks for participating in this E-Panel, especially now during Reading the World month.  What language(s) do you translate from and to what language(s)?

Howard Curtis:

I translate from French and Italian into English

Katherine Silver:

Principally Spanish to English.

Paul Olchvary:

Hungarian to English

Richard Jeffrey Newman

Classical Persian

Dan:

Which of the languages you translate from and to is your native language?  How did you come about learning the other language(s)?

Howard Curtis:

My native language is English.  I learned French at school and taught myself Italian over the years.

Katherine Silver:

English is my native language. I learned Spanish first in Israel, then in Latin America, and always because of the bad company I kept (and still keep).

Paul Olchvary:

Born in America to parents of Hugarian descent who made sure I learned their language, I grew up with a good feel for Hungarian---which in my subsequent years of life in Hungary (where I moved at the age of 25) has become what I might call a second, quasi-native language alongside English (which I am indisputably more of a native in).

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

My native language is English. I speak and understand Persian, though not with anything resembling native fluency, and neither read nor write the language. I learned Persian mostly from spending time with my wife and her family. I began to learn to read last year, but time constraints have made it impossible for me to pursue that education further—for now. I do plan to study the language more formally when I have the chance.

Dan:

Do you consider yourself bilingual?

Howard Curtis:

No, I certainly don’t consider myself bilingual.  I can get along pretty well in spoken French, perhaps somewhat less well in spoken Italian, but only because I haven’t had so much practice in the past few years.  In my opinion, translators doesn’t necessarily have to have a total spoken command of the language(s) they translate from, but they do need to know the written language very well, to read a lot in that language, and to make constant efforts to extend and update their vocabulary, knowledge of idioms, etc. 

Katherine Silver:

I speak four languages, and a spattering of others, but I I’m still learning all of them, especially English.

Paul Olchvary:

Yes. (See above.) My years of life in Hungary have by now polished what had been a rusty knowledge of Hungarian to the point where I’d say I know it almost as well as I know English.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

If by bilingual you mean “able to function like a native-speaker in each language,” then no, absolutely not. But if bilingualism exists along a continuum of competencies in each language, then, yes, I can function bilingually in each of the languages I speak other than English—Hebrew, Persian and Korean—though I have very different levels of competency in each one.

Dan:

How did you get into translating?

Howard Curtis:

Twenty-two years ago I was working as a stage director, with little success, and decided it was time to go in a new direction.  As I’d always been considered “good at languages”, I thought translation might be that direction.  I read somewhere that the way to go about getting work as a translator was to translate a sample chapter of a book you liked and submit it to publishers.  I was a big fan of Georges Simenon (still am) and it struck me that some of the English translations of his work that were coming out at the time were pretty bad.  So I took a Simenon novel I knew hadn’t been translated yet (there happened to be a copy of it in French in my local public library), translated the first chapter, and sent it to Simenon’s British publisher.  They liked it well enough to commission a complete translation, not of that Simenon novel, but another one (though I did get to do that one a year later).

Katherine Silver:

I read a book in Spanish and began translating it, then sent it around to publishers. I found translation to be an excellent way to “practice” writing, the way a painter might learn perspective or a musician do scales. I also had a fabulous teacher, Dr. Eddie Williams, at San Francisco State University, who taught translation as a rigorous craft, and understood that translating was a way of reading as deeply as possible.

Paul Olchvary:

I’ve always been a writer, and somehow it seemed natural for me to actively seek out (literary) translation opportunities when I first landed in Hungary, in 1990 (to take up a job teaching composition skills at a university English department). By the mid-1990s, I realized that translation, though it might not pay too many bills for a while, is (1) a deeply satisfying “cultural mission,” (2) a pursuit that improves my own writing (both by informing my style and giving me good ideas), and (3) a means of nurturing my contents in the publishing world.?

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

The opportunity, quite literally, fell into my lap. I received a call from a friend of mine, an Iranian, who said he had gotten a call from a friend of his about a third person who had started a non-profit in Manhattan called the International Society for Iranian Culture (www.isicweb.org). ISIC was looking for someone, my friend told me, to read through a series of scholarly English translations of classical Persian texts and write summaries/retellings of them for a general audience. Would I be interested? Of course I said yes. It seemed to me a wonderful opportunity to learn not only about a literature of which I was entirely ignorant, but also about my wife’s history and culture. When I met with ISIC’s executive director, however, Mehdi Faridzadeh, he explained to me that he was looking for a poet who was a native speaker of English to use these scholarly translations, which are generally accepted as accurate, to create literary translations for a contemporary audience. At first I said no, not only because my knowledge of Persian is so plainly inadequate to making any use whatsoever of the originals of the texts I would  be translating, but also because I knew nothing about that literature, and I did not feel qualified to do the job.

Mehdi persuaded my to try, however, and, motivated both by the pleasure I took in working up the samples I submitted and by the knowledge that I would be bringing into the 21st century works of literature that were already regarded as masterpieces—not to mention that they would represent the primary access my son and other Iranian-Americans of his generation would have to Persian classical literature—when Mehdi offered me a five book contract, I accepted.

My experience, in other words, is quite different from many other literary translators, who tend to choose the works they translate because they know them and love them. Not only were the books I was to translate chosen by other people—specifically, a committee of scholars that Mehdi convened in Iran—but that committee also chose which parts of those books I should translate. They, of course, had their own agenda—which is partially clear to me and which I understand even if I do not always agree with it, or at least with my understanding of it, based on what they have given me to work with—and so the result has been that some of the work I have been doing has required me to create poetry in English, or to try to create poetry in English (I do not think I have always been successful) from originals that I disagree with and/or find really, really boring. On the other hand, I am now really intrigued by Persian classical literature as a whole, and I would love the opportunity to expand the selections I have translated into the entire work.

Dan:

When you are reading material in the original language, are you thinking in English – translating on the fly, or thinking in that original language?

Howard Curtis:

I try to think only about the original language, but I can’t always escape the professional deformation of translating the odd sentence that leaps out at me as I go along.

Katherine Silver:

All of the above. I always read the original through before beginning to translate, and if I’m lucky, I hear a tinkling in the background, some faint melody in English beginning to emerge.

Paul Olchvary:

Both, in a sense. Although I am thinking primarily in the original language, when reading something in the original that seems to be just crying out for translation--that seems sufficiently “universal” to exist, to breathe, in English---I can’t help but imagine certain passages in English (i.e., translate on the fly). Yes, when I encounter such a text, I am so excited that I can’t help but test it out at least parts of it in my mind as I read along.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

This question doesn’t really apply to me, since I am working from English to English.

Dan:

Do you prefer to reading one language over the other(s)?

Howard Curtis:

No. I’m happy to read in any language I can understand!  But when I’m in the middle of a translation, I prefer to read in English, because I think it helps to have the rhythms of good English prose going around in my head. 

Paul Olchvary:

Since the most thrilling reading experiences of my youth occurred in English, and I did, after all, grow up in America, I generally prefer reading in English. Besides, there is more wonderful original literature to choose from in English than in Hungarian, simply because there are many more writers out there with an incredibly wide range of life experiences. That said, I prefer reading Hungarian literature in Hungarian (perhaps this is obvious), and I often prefer reading literature from the region (e.g., Czech, Russian, Serbian) in Hungarian than in English; for a translator living in Budapest is probably more in touch with certain aspects of the cultural-political circumstances of the region than, say, a translator in New York who is translating into English and gets to visit this region less often.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

Again, this question doesn’t really apply to me.

Dan:

Do you find it helps to know the author you are translating?  Know their thought processes and beliefs?

Howard Curtis:

Do you mean know them personally or be familiar with their other works?  If the latter, I think it can be very useful.  If the former, it isn’t essential but it can certainly be useful, not so much to find out their beliefs (which are usually implicit in their work, anyway) but to be able to ask them specific questions about tricky points of vocabulary or nuance.   
Ottavio Cappellani, the author of the book that’s featured in Reading the World – Who is Lou Sciortino? – was very helpful in elucidating the Sicilian dialect of which the book is full, as well as explaining various arcane aspects of Sicilian society and history.  I’ve translated three books by an Italian writer named Gianrico Carofiglio, who’s a lawyer by profession and whose books are full of Italian legal jargon: again, the author was very helpful in explaining these things.  I’ve met quite a few of the authors I’ve translated, and have almost always found them very willing to help with that kind of thing.   

Katherine Silver:

I don’t care particularly about their processes or beliefs, for I am translating their words, not their persons. Collaboration with an author can be very helpful when it comes to specific queries or difficult passages; it can also be a pain (current projects definitely excluded).

Paul Olchvary:

Absolutely. Indeed, if an author is alive and not too old or busy to respond to queries, I consider it the translator’s responsibility to fire away at the author with queries throughout the translation of a larger project especially. Of course, having strong oral and written skills in the original language (or in some other, common language) helps a great deal in this respect if the author does not know English. The downside of being in contact with the author is that it can make the translation process much more timeconsuming than it might be otherwise---which is a problem if the translation pays peanuts to begin with. But if the work in question clearly deserves such meticulous attention---might it be read a century from now?---why then, the author is only an email or a phone call away..... (And most authors are tickled pink to be translated into English.)

In closing, I might add that I cannot imagine knowing the language I translate from so well that I wouldn’t have at least some questions for an author. A translator should not be shy about having questions to ask---and then asking them, too, whether of the author or some other authority (if the author is, say, dead).

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

Since the poets I am working with are all dead, it is impossible to know whether knowing them would have been helpful. What I can say is that, generally speaking, the biographical research I have done has added little in terms of the actual translations. What has been helpful has been learning about the religious and cultural values that were held at the time. So, for example, it was very useful to me to understand in a very basic way some of the Sufi concepts with which Saadi works, and it has been similarly helpful to learn a little bit about Zoroastrianism now that I am working on the Shahnameh, the Persian national epic.

Dan:

Looking back at the works you have translated – how did you determine they were works you wanted to translate?

Howard Curtis:

I’ve almost never chosen the books I’ve translated.  In most cases I’m approached by a publisher who’s already chosen the book for publication in English.  As I consider myself a professional, performing a service, I don’t usually turn anything down.  Perhaps in some cases I should have, because the books turned out not very interesting to translate.  But those are the exceptions.  Mostly, I’ve been happy to translate the books I have translated, even though they weren’t my choices.  In some ways, I envy those who only translate the books they choose, but on the other hand, I’ve had the chance, thanks to publishers, to get to know books and authors I might not otherwise have known about.      

Katherine Silver:

At a minimum, I want to enjoy the read. Then, I hope to “hear” the English as I read the Spanish. The ones I feel compelled to translate (few and far between) present a challenge to English, a call to expand and stretch my limited mastery over its innate prowess.

Paul Olchvary:

Initially, I accepted anything that chanced to come my way. But, with time, it was generally a question of whether I could immediately imagine the English text while reading the original---and whether I LOVE the book. Certainly a book that clearly speaks primarily to readers of the original language---the sort of text full of cultural allusions that would require a slew of footnotes---scares me away. But fortunately (for me and for the cause of Hungarian literature abroad), there are some Hungarian writers who speak to universal human themes with such beauty that I think to myself, their imaginative worlds really must breathe in English. And if I don’t do it, someone else will, with time....

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

As I said above, the works were chosen for me.

Dan:

Are there some other authors that you would like to translate in the future?

Howard Curtis:

Some years ago – and this was one of the few that was my own choice – I translated a book called Memoirs from Elsinore by a little-known Belgian writer named Franz Hellens, whose work I’ve read a lot of and whom I consider a neglected twentieth-century master.  I did the translation for an academic publisher in New York, which meant that the book was exorbitantly priced and not generally available in bookstores.  Consequently, it’s only sold about 80 copies in 7 years!  I’d love to find a publisher willing to reissue the translation in a more commercial edition, because I think the book is a masterpiece, and then I’d like to translate other books by the same author, because there’s a lot of great stuff by him, all completely unknown outside Belgium and pretty well unknown in Belgium too, where he’s almost forgotten (he died 35 years ago).          
As a matter of fact, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Belgium and there are other (French-language) Belgian writers I’ve had the chance to read whom I’d love to translate, especially those in the field of littérature fantastique: I’m particularly fond of the work of Gérard Prévot and Anne Richter.   

Katherine Silver:

I hope so, otherwise I’ll have to find another occupation. I’m currently translating a novel by Horacio Castellanos Moya for New Directions. I’d like to translate more of his works. He’s a fascinating, complex, and brilliant writer.

Paul Olchvary:

There are always authors out there I’d be happy to translate. That said, if the author whose wonderful novel I just finished translating completes his next book, I look forward to translating that.?

Richard Jeffrey Newman

This is an interesting question for me. On the one hand, I would love the opportunity, eventually, to go back and translate Saadi’s two major works—Gulistan and Bustan, which are the ones of which I have done selections—in their entirety. The next three authors I will be translating are Ferdowsi, Nezami and Attar. I have collaborated with Professor John Moyne, who was Coleman Barks’ original collaborator, on a new book of Rumi translations, and I know that Mehdi has another five books waiting for me when I finish these first five. On the other hand, I have since learned of other Iranian poets, ones who wrote closer to our time, whom I think it would be fun to try. The one I am thinking of right now was named Iraj Mirza, whose work, as far as I can tell, has some interesting similarities with the Earl of Rochester’s work. But I will probably need to learn to read Persian in order to tackle him.

Dan:

Are you aware of journals out there like TWO LINES and Absinthe, that are only publishing translated work?

Howard Curtis:

I’ve heard of TWO LINES, but never read it.  Never heard of Absinthe.

Paul Olchvary:

Yes, but one does have to go looking (e.g., on the ALTA website) to find them. Thank goodness for such journals, even if they are generally unable to pay more than complimentary copies.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

Another journal whose name people should know is Circumference, which is published in New York City.

Dan:

Can one make a living as a translator?

Howard Curtis:

Just about, but only if you get offered a lot of work, and accept everything you’re offered.
That’s my position right now, but for many years it wasn’t.  I’ve been translating for more than twenty years, and it’s only in the past five years that I’ve been getting enough work to do it full time and earn anything approaching a normal living.

Katherine Silver:

Maybe if I lived in Thailand. Since I live in Berkeley, I have to heavily supplement my income, such as it is, by working in publishing as an editor and project manager.

Paul Olchvary:

Not easy at all, at least not as regards literary translation. Fortunately for me, there are relatively few people out there translating in my specialty language, Hungarian, so book publishers looking for translators do not have a hundred names to choose from. That said, as vast and wonderful as the universe of Hungarian literature is, little of it is sufficiently universal in theme to prosper well beyond the confines of its own language. And of those works that do “qualify,” only a few have what it takes (e.g., an emotionally gripping narrative, a page-turning quality) to make it to the radar screens of big publishers capable of paying enough of a translation fee to live on.

That said, if I continue living in Hungary, where life is a tad less costly and I own a home, I could probably get by on literary translation. But no way could I do so if I resettle in the States (which I am planning at some point); then, translation will be a supplementary income alongside teaching or else my own writing.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

I certainly can’t, though that’s also not something I am complaining about.

Dan:

What is the typical number of pages you get through in a day?  Or, how long would it take to translate a couple hundred pages of work?

Howard Curtis:

Pretty well impossible to answer.  It depends on many factors: how closely printed the pages are, how difficult the text is, how tired I am!  In general, I’m quite a fast worker.  Last year I was asked – by an agency, not a publisher – to translate a six-hundred page book in two months (it had to be ready for the Frankfurt Book Fair).  I somehow managed to do it, but it was a punishing schedule, and I didn’t do much sleeping or eating during those two months!  Luckily, the style of the book was fairly simple, but I don’t think I’d ever want to do something like that again.       

Katherine Silver:

Depends on the text. Ten pages a day is a good average. But that’s just the first draft. Then the text undergoes a process similar to a copyedit/rewrite, which usually means reviewing it twice more.

Paul Olchvary:

Somewhere between five and ten pages (1500 to 3000 words) a day, depending on the text. It would take me four to eight weeks to produce a decent first draft of a work around 200 pages long. Of course, some Hungarian prose is just so unwieldy that the time spent editing my own translation can be 50% of the time I spent rendering that first draft.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

If I am able to set aside time to work, I can get through as many as 50 lines in a day. These days, however, since I am teaching and the only time I am able to devote exclusively to translating is at most an hour in the morning before I go to work, I am happy if I get through 10 lines.

Dan:

What is your translating process?  Do you read the whole work first in the native language and then begin?  Do you discuss it with the original author?  Do you just start translating from word one?

Howard Curtis:

I almost always read the book through once in the original – twice if I have the time, which I don’t always.   I never discuss the book with the author before starting, but may send him/her any questions I have after doing the first draft.  I usually start from page one and just keep right on to the end.

Paul Olchvary:

Ideally, I read the book first in the native language. But I am a slow reader, so I must also consider that if I am not likely to be paid much for a translation, this is not a luxury I can afford. It all depends on the work, too. Some books are just so exciting from page one---and do not require an understanding of the whole in advance---that it seems natural to sit down and read as I translate.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

I tend to read and then produce work in chunks, a poem at a time, if I am working on a book of poems; a narrative section at a time if I am working with a continuous narrative. (I should add that all the work I am translating is poetry.)

Dan:

Frequently when reading a translated work, I’ll come across words left in the native language – what is your typical reason for doing this?

Howard Curtis:

I very rarely do this unless there is a particular reason for it.  For example, in the case of terms relating to food and cooking, there is often no English equivalent for the French or Italian terms, so naturally they stay in the original language.      

Who is Lou Sciortino?, the Ottavio Cappellani book featured in Reading the World, was a very special case.  The book features a mix of Sicilian and Sicilian-American characters (mostly Mafiosi) and is written partly in standard Italian and partly in Sicilian dialect, with the odd American word or phrase thrown in.  It was obvious from the start that there was no way to exactly reproduce this linguistic richness in English, so my solution was to put it into a very stylized kind of American Mafia-speak, and to throw in a fairly large number of Italian words, but only if it was clear from the context more or less what they meant.  This was an unusual procedure for me, but I only did it to try to convey at least a little of the linguistic mix of the original.       

Katherine Silver:

Each case is different, but in general it is because the word encapsulates so much specific meaning in such a specific context that it would be futile to attempt to find an equivalent in the target language (the language the text is being translated into). This overlapping, in written and spoken form, is one of the ways languages borrow from each other and change.

Paul Olchvary:

I try not to do that. But, of course, I translate not from French (and there is a long tradition in English of embellishing prose with French words), but Hungarian. However, occasionally there are just some words or expressions that, if “translated,” are so far removed from the sense of the original that it’s best not to bother. Besides, a certain exotic touch may lend a degree of authenticity to a work. For example, while technically speaking, the Hungarian name Jancsi equals “Johnny” in English, as it is the diminutive of János (John), I would certainly not write “Johnny” in the translation: even though it’s more readily pronouncable, it carries a boatload of associations that have nothing to do with “Jancsi” in Hungarian. But this is a less than perfect example, because the reader would know at least know that “Jancsi” is a person. If however I leave the Hungarian fruit distillate pálinka as is in English---e.g., “Jancsi had a shot of pálinka”---and do not explain what this drink is, I have failed in my job as a translator---which is to make the experience of the English/American reader as close as possible to that of the Hungarian reader (who has the inside knowledge to tell him/her what pálinka is). If I were translating from Serbian or some other Slavic language and the particular fruit distillate was made with plums, I could of course write slivovitz, which has meaning in English---but because that does have a rather Slavic ring to it, I’d probably translate the Hungarian equivalent drink (plum pálinka) as plum spirits or, perhaps plum distillate.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

There are some words that simply cannot be translated. Take, for example, the word farr, which in Persian denotes the aura understood to emanate from a just king who rules with God’s favor—though, the god in question, in the original meaning of the word, is not Allah, but is rather Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian deity. I have seen the word translated as “refulgence,” which is absolutely unacceptable to me, and “aura” just has too many connotations in English that I would want to avoid. So I use the Persian word and explain its meaning in a footnote. In addition, though, I think there is real value in code switching like that, independently of whether or not there are adequate English equivalents. As a teacher of English as a Second Language, and as a man married to a woman whose English is very much inflected by her native tongue, I have lived much of my life, professionally and personally, in an environment where elements of non-English languages got mixed in with English, almost always—in my opinion, anyway—to the betterment of English and absolutely always in making the cultural space of American English more welcoming of foreignness, something I think is very important.

That said, I don’t think that code switching in literary translation should be done willy-nilly, for its own sake. There need to be clear reasons for doing so and those reasons need to apply/be applied consistently throughout the text.

Dan:

Do you also write your own material?  If so, in which language?

Howard Curtis:

Many years ago, I wrote a couple of plays that were broadcast on BBC radio.  I have many ideas for novels but no time right now to sit down and try to write them as I’m so busy translating!  Obviously, I write in English.

Katherine Silver:

Yes.  In English.

Paul Olchvary:

Lots—in English. I just completed a novel (and my agent is seeking a publisher) and am writing another one. I like to daydream that I could live off my writing and translate on the side.?

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

I write my own poems. Indeed, I think of myself primarily as a poet, not a translator. My first book, The Silence Of Men, was published last year by CavanKerry Press. I am also an essayist, though I have had to put that work aside since I began doing my translations.

Dan:

Do you belong to any organizations of translators?  If so, what benefits have you found by having joined up?

Howard Curtis:

I am a member of the Translators Association in the UK.  The main benefit for me has been the chance to meet other translators from time to time.  It’s a very lonely profession, and a lot of the time you feel as if you’re working in a vacuum.  It’s nice to talk occasionally to people who know what you’re talking about. 

Katherine Silver:

ALTA (American Literary Translators Association). I’ve met some really smart and funny fellow translators.

Paul Olchvary:

Not yet, but I am considering joining ALTA.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

I am a member of ALTA and have applied for a membership to PEN.

Dan:

Well, I’d like to thank you, both for taking the time to answer these questions, and also for making the efforts that have allowed me to read some fantastic works that I’d never have been able to had you not done so.

Howard Curtis:

Thank you, it’s great to get a chance to emerge from anonymity sometimes.

Katherine Silver:

Thank you for doing this.

Paul Olchvary:

You’re welcome. And thanks for the opportunity to contribute.

Richard Jeffrey Newman:

Thank you, Dan, for the opportunity to be a part of this panel. I have enjoyed it thoroughly.

Comments

[Jessica and Dwayne from Absinthe]

Nice interview ... good to hear from some of our favorite translators!

[Jane Moseley]

I would like to contact Howard Curtis about translating a book for us from Italian to English. Could you forward my emal to him?
Many thanks
Jane Moseley
JMS Books