What is a good translation?

I'm still thinking about how we define "good" in terms of literary translation. For the Seagull Books newsletter, I asked a whole lot of other translators their opinions, and wrote about why it matters, whether we can demand that reviewers understand, and how taste plays a role. You can read it here.

On Improving

My friend Michele Hutchison translates from Dutch to English and has written an excellent piece for English PEN about how experienced translators get better. If you haven't read it yet you should go and do so now, really. If you're a translator, at least.

There's a part two coming so I may be jumping the gun here, but there are two things I want to add from my point of view, having been an inexperienced translator not all that long ago (Michele talks to people with a lot more experience than me, though). The first is that practice makes you better. The mere act of having translated similar phrases or ideas before, having tackled similar challenges and found a passable solution, helps us to try again. This is something I say to people who ask about how to get into translation: practice! But the second thing is that practice alone isn't worth nearly as much as practice with feedback. Sometimes I find myself trying new things out, or indeed repeating old things, that I'm not sure work. Or sometimes I'm just unaware that something I'm doing in my translation only really works in my own mind and not for readers not as submerged in the text as I am. That's where feedback is painful but good. Because slipping into habits is possibly the downside of having experience and practice.

In Berlin and a couple of other cities, we have translation labs where people can get feedback. What I'd really recommend though is a more intensive workshop situation like those offered by the Vice Versa programme in Germany. It's the equivalent of taking a loofa to your translations – it smarts but they look much better afterwards. New Books in German now has a list of this and other opportunities for translators, incidentally.

Translating Jelinek

Much has been made of Nicholas Spice's favourable article on Elfriede Jelinek in the London Review of Books. It is very much worth taking the time to read, very well informed and interesting. But people seem to have picked up on what is little more than an aside, Spice's criticism of Martin Chalmers' translation of Gier/Greed. In fact, Spice goes into barely any detail, condemning the translation without naming a single flaw by name - just as he fails to name the translator, perhaps out of a false sense of politeness.

If you're actually interested in the art of translating Jelinek, take a look at the website of the Elfriede Jelinek Research Centre at the University of Vienna. The site features essays in German by eight of the author's translators, including the irrepressible Lilian Friedberg, who has translated several of Jelinek's plays into American English. In fact, you can access several English translations (although none by Martin Chalmers) via Jelinek's own site (scroll down to 2007 and 2008 on the left). But remember - no quoting! Elfriede doesn't approve...

Literary Translation Lab(s)

Do you secretly translate passages from your favourite books? Are you a translator with a passion for poetry? Do you translate literature but don't have many people to read through your work? Are you looking for inspiration and support for your literary translation work?

Then you need a Literary Translation Lab. Our version here in Berlin was inspired by a Polish group initiated by Dorota Stroinska. We meet up once a month to inspect each others' translations through a literary microscope. Anyone can come, and anyone can bring translations - provided they're from German to English, as we don't feel qualified to judge anything else. We're loosely affiliated to the No Man's Land German literature magazine, and we have about six or seven regulars, with other people turning up as and when they have something to bring along.

Our first ever lab was a year ago. Three of us sat waiting around the table in the "library" at the Kreuzberg restaurant Max & Moritz, wondering whether anyone would turn up. And they did! It seems there are plenty of translation geeks out there who had been just waiting for this opportunity to meet like-minded people and work on texts together rather than just chatting and drinking - although we do that too. So far, we've looked at prose and poetry by Ludwig Hohl, Heinrich Heine, Hendrik Jackson, Clemens Meyer (natch), Wolfgang Hilbig, Funny van Dannen... and I can't remember any more but there have been about 20-25 texts so you'll understand the problem.

I for one really value the experience. Even commenting on other people's work hones your own skills, as you spot those things you do yourself in the process. And there is nothing better (or more daunting) than a room full of people taking your own translation apart for getting a really great result. Some of us faced the problem that we do translations for German publishers, which are rarely read by a native speaker before they're let loose on the world. So we now have a "free" editing service for just that situation.

What I'm most pleased about and proud of is that we've encouraged people to start translating German literature who didn't beforehand - from students to seasoned professionals. And No Man's Land #2 features a couple of texts resulting from that. If you want to follow our example elsewhere, go right ahead. Schafft ein, zwei, viele Übersetzungslabore! And if you live in Berlin and want to take a look, just come along on the first Tuesday of the month at 8 pm.

We'll be celebrating our first birthday in May. More very soon...

True Stories

Imagine you're a writer, and you just happen to be bilingual. You've written a book and the rights have been sold to the country whose language you also speak. Let's just say it's what we call a "smaller" language. Being a generally helpful type of person and, of course, interested in making sure your book works well in the other language, you offer to help the translator if he or she has any questions. The publisher umms and ahs and turns your offer down. Would you be surprised?

Then imagine you are a little concerned about the whole situation, and of course, the book is your creation, so you lean on the foreign publisher to get a look at the proofs once the translation is done. And then you read it and discover that the translation is full of mistakes. Not just things you would write differently, but genuine misunderstandings that alter the meaning. What would you do then?

Well, imagine you talk to your original publisher and tell them there is at least one mistake every three pages, and lean on them to threaten the foreign publisher with legal action unless they withdraw the translation. And then they commission someone else with the job, who wisely enough contacts you to start with. And imagine you talk to that translator about the whole story and he or she sympathises and agrees with you, but tries to console you with the fact that translations in their country are always like that, and the Nobel prize winners writing in your language are no better off either. They just can't read the translations.

Living in Germany spoils a person, in many ways. But one of them is that one comes to expect good translations. Over the past thirty years or so, German literary translators have become incredibly professional. They have their own institutions and foundations funding and organising further training, there are degree courses in literary translation, they can apply for grants to visit countries where their books are set, spend weeks or months beavering away at literary translation centres, and so on and so forth. Of course, they're still badly paid and there are still mavericks and beginners out there. And there are still people who think any old graduate in American Studies they meet at a party can translate quality fiction - and give them a contract to do so. But in general, German translators are excellent.

But part of the reason for this is that they've got together and applied for funding, lobbied the culture ministry, set up committees and all those other thankless tasks. Literary translation was once the domain of well-educated housewives and professors during the holidays (and is still paid accordingly). Now, it is a field peopled by experts. Only that's not the case in every country. The Robert Bosch Foundation runs an admirable programme promoting literary translation and translators out of German in specific countries, but that can't reach everyone and will never achieve the level of content offered to learning-hungry translators into German.

Perhaps it's just a question of time until translators around the world reach a high level of professionalism. But as long as literary translation is badly paid, it won't attract as many talented people as it might do, and those talented people it does attract won't be able to devote enough time to it for their work to be as good as it might be. And if you think literary translators are badly paid in Germany or Britain, talk to someone from Albania or Slovenia for a bit of an eye-opener.

But all that is no great consolation for our poor bilingual author, is it?