Franzen's Freiheit: Critical Reactions

A little while ago I wrote about about the fact that Franzen's Freedom was translated by two people - Bettina Abarbanell and Eike Schönfeld - to make sure it hit the German market running before too many paying customers bought the original.

Now the reviews are out and everyone else is up in arms as well. Iris Radisch of Die Zeit gave a revealing interview to Deutschlandfunk, in which she pointed out that the critics have had to rush out their reviews as well, staying up all night to read the 800-page book:

So this book, which Jonathan Franzen spent nine years working on, is being read and reviewed within two or three days, by German reviewers at least - and it wasn't much better in the States.

Radisch hadn't actually read the book at this point - which makes you wonder why they actually interviewed her - and didn't comment on the quality of the translation beyond questioning the wisdom of using two translators. And nor did the reviewer in Die Zeit, Ursula März. In fact, the poor exhausted critics had been quietly working around the subject, possibly because the rush to get their reviews in meant there was no time to look at translation quality.

But then came Evelyn Roll in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The piece isn't online I'm afraid, but it's a humdinger. She points out that Franzen speaks German himself and once translated Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen (Michael Orthofer damns it as a "reasonable new translation"). And then:

Yet reading Freiheit in German is enough to put you in a very bad mood. Because two different translators worked on it, which is absurd enough in the first place. Because the two of them obviously didn't coordinate their translations sufficiently so the tone varies, even when the narrative perspective stays the same. Because the publishers Rowohlt felt so obliged to dock onto the American Franzen hype that they put the publication date forward again and made the two actually actually acclaimed translators work at high speed (...).

I'm feeling slightly guilty for pointing the whole thing out now. Because I can see both sides - I'm guessing it wasn't cheap for Rowohlt to buy the rights to the book, and they don't want to lose revenue to the original. Publishing is a business like any other, but there's no chance to launch a beta-version of a major translation because once it's out there the reviews come flooding in (or not, if it's in the English-speaking world). And I know those two translators worked their arses off to get it done on time. Oh, and the German editor Ulrike Schieder too. (Note to self: forgetting to credit the editor may result in anonymous comments.)

But then what else can we expect? In most cases translators can work faster than writers - after all, for most of us this is our day job and we don't have to worry about plot and characterisation and all the rest. But translating under too much time pressure is never going to produce a masterpiece, no matter how talented the practitioner.

What's interesting though, as an aside, is that German critics are gradually reacting to the Munich conference on reviewing translations that I wrote about here. And by that I mean making the effort to comment on translation quality in their reviews. I know this because I compile an overview of press reviews for the German translators' association VDÜ, which you can find under "Presse" on their website. In German, obviously.

Of course that has its good and bad sides - because I've noticed that, as in this case, critics are now slightly quicker to put the translation down, albeit while often assuming it's not all the translator's fault. Katharina Granzin, whose contentious article I picked up on in my original post about the conference, is a case in point. In a review of Petra Hulová's Endstation Taiga in the Frankfurter Rundschau, she devotes two paragraphs to the translation - very well argued, very tactful, almost friendly, but still pretty devastating for the translator Michael Stavaric.

Still, I for one prefer that to the standard single-adjective faint praise usually reserved for translators in reviews. I'll be keeping an eye on developments.

Franzen's Freiheit and the Multiple Translator Phenomenon

The whole world's in Franzen Freedom frenzy, and Germany's no exception. And of course somebody has to do the job of translating the book in record time - because while the author took nine years to produce the book, the German version has to be finished yesterday.

I've written about the multiple translator phenomenon before, specifically the six-man team who had to translate Dan Brown in ten days. Which may or may not have been a success, I don't know. But now there are a couple of rather more literary titles being translated by team effort.

I have a sneaking suspicion this is not an entirely new phenomenon. I know of one prominent North American novel that was translated by two different people to get it onto the market quickly back in 2003, and the name of the translator at the front of the book is a pseudonym. But now publishers seem to be more open about doing it.

The prime example at the moment is Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals/Tiere essen. The book was translated by Isabel Bogdan, Ingo Herzke and Brigitte Jakobeit, and my friend Isabel accompanied the process occasionally on her jolly good blog. Which takes us back to the subject of translators building buzz for their books.

The German publishers Kiepenheuer & Witsch have garnered huge amounts of publicity elsewhere too and are setting up a new online readers' community for the book along the lines of their successful, groundbreaking, etc. etc. DFW site unendlicher spass. I look forward to seeing the site and whether the translators will be as involved this time as DFW's translator Ulrich Blumenbach. Certainly, it'd be interesting to find out how that collaboration worked.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Franzen's previous translator Bettina Abarbanell has been working with Eike Schönfeld on changing Freedom into Freiheit. It's due for release on 17 September, just over two weeks after the official US publication date. As in the case of Foer's book, the German publishers Rowohlt have chosen excellent translators for the job - but one wonders whether an 800-page novel can be translated excellently by two different people. Won't we be able to see the gaps? Schönfeld gave a couple of clues about the process in an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt last month, if you read between the lines:

Not every author is suitable for every translator, says Schönfeld, and sometimes you work under exceptional conditions, somehow. For instance when a writer like Franzen speaks quite good German himself. Or when you have to translate a book faster than you'd actually want to.

Obviously, translators are always under time pressure, but as it becomes easier to get hold of the original versions, publishers are in an even greater rush to reap their investments on the home market. If I were a bestselling American author though, I'd want to know that my book was getting the best possible treatment in the translation process. And I'm not sure that includes being chopped into sections and then stuck back together again, no matter how talented the translators and editors working on it may be.