Books Everybody's Talking About (That I Won't Be Reviewing)

Four books are splashed all over the German reviews sections right now, none of which I will be reviewing because I am a grumpy old woman. Here's what they are and why I don't like them:

Norbert Gstrein: Die ganze Wahrheit
A thinly veiled massive bitching session about Germany's most prominent publishing widow, Ulla Berkéwicz-Unseld. Surely no one expects anyone outside the German publishing world to give a shit?

Daniel Kehlmann: Lob
While the critics are having fun pouring scorn over young whippersnapper Kehlmann, I'm wondering why he hardly writes about any writers but dead ones in his essays in praise of literature.

Thomas Hettche: Die Liebe der Väter
The press is having a field day. Hettche's written a short novel about an unmarried father and his difficult relationship to his estranged daughter - just when the German courts have ruled on custody rights for unmarried fathers. I suspect it's excellent - I just don't want to go there.

Franka Potente: Zehn
The actress has written a book of short stories set in Japan. It would be bad for my karma to explain why the reviews are mostly outside of the literature section.

Thinking Outside the Translation Box

For a while now, Chad Post of Open Letter Books/Three Percent has been saying something I've been thinking. One of the reasons publishers tend to cite for not publishing many translations is the cost of translation. Only the thing is, it's not hugely difficult to get grants to cover that. It's no secret that all sorts of European cultural organisations will actually pay British and American publishers to translate books from their countries - from the Goethe Institut to the Icelandic Literature Fund. Which kind of cancels out that whole "too expensive" argument to some extent. But I don't like to be the person to say that, because what do I know about publishing?

Anyway, now Chad - who does know about publishing translations, because that's what he does - has put down his thoughts on the matter for the trade newsletter Publishing Perspectives. In a two-part feature, no less. You can read part one here and part two here. In essence, he says the focus should be less on the cost factor than on building an audience for translations and international fiction. In two ways: what he calls the "beach read" – heck, why not just go ahead and publish entertaining page-turners in translation, which might well encourage people to read more international fiction – and by cultivating the "non-beach reading audience" – those readers who are into more challenging stuff and love a bit of foreign writing every now and then.

I don't have much to add, to be honest. Except OMG, just read it right now and do exactly what he says, people! I am available for translations from the German, beach read or non-beach read.

Corine International Book Awards

The Corine International Book Awards were (take a deep breath here) "created in order to promote the cultural and economic relevance of the medium book at one of the world’s foremost publishing places which is Munich and to further promote reading and to explore new fields to readers."

They go to both German and international writers, a nice touch that pretty much reflects how the German book market works. And despite them being awarded by the wealthy state of Bavaria, no actual money goes to the winners. But they do have the advantage of being announced right in the middle of the summer holiday season, when - as you may have noticed - nothing else is going on whatsoever.

So marvel, dear readers, at the eight winners in various categories. The most interesting for German book lovers being Hans Joachim Schädlich for his slice of historical literary fiction Kokoshkin's Journey. Looks like it'd be a perfect candidate for translation: Nazis, Russians - and only 192 pages.

On Translating Hegemann: III

So after the cries of horror on Friday, I have withdrawn into myself and consulted with my editor, and we're sticking with the replacement celebrities. Not in every case (Ann Summers is out, thanks to your mystified feedback), and subject to approval from the author, but still. English-language readers are not used to glossaries and Axolotl Roadkill is not the book to introduce them with. Where German readers of international fiction are apparently happy to be confronted with Betty Drapers and Baal Shem Tovs, British readers are already exploring new territory by reading a translated book. And I want them to get the jokes, not reach for the encyclopedia every few pages.

But rest assured, there are plenty of culturally specific references left in the translation. There are obscure German documentary filmmakers, three-minute vacations in the Teutoburg Forest while leaning out of the window, wealthy and down-at-heel corners of Berlin. There's Nutella and Berghain and Franz Beckenbauer. And it's crucially important that the book is set in today's Berlin, so I'm taking care not to wipe out anything that's not absolutely incomprehensible.

As an aside, a few people expressed wonderment over the fact that the target audience is British. The translation rights have been sold to a British publisher, Constable & Robinson. Usually, English-language rights are sold separately for Britain (sometimes including the Commonwealth) and the USA. Publishers with international distribution possibilities will sometimes buy rights for the whole of the English-speaking world, but that's not the case here. What often happens is that a British publisher and an American publisher will buy rights to the same book and commission a single translation, effectively halving their costs. Then that translation will be reworked for the respective other market. The changes can be fairly drastic, going beyond spelling and punctuation to those bizarre words Americans use for their clothing; you know, pants and vests and the like.

So if and when an American publishing house realises the error of its ways and decides to buy the US rights to Axolotl Roadkill, they'll be editing my text all over again anyway. Or maybe it'll be decades on and they'll commission a brand new translation of this now classic work, rather than using my ham-fisted attempt at rendering Helene Hegemann in the English of 2010.

On Translating Hegemann: II

Four literary translators in a beer garden. And what do they talk about? Well, the significance of the year 1866 in German history, why on earth anyone would want to drink Berliner Weisse, children and grandchildren, books - and translation issues.

And quite a controversial discussion ensued. There's one issue in my translation of Helene Hegemann's Axolotl Roadkill that's causing me a few headaches. Fairly often, the narrator or other characters will namedrop German celebrities. And the choice I face then is to leave them "in the original" or to replace them with some other, more international celebrity. So far, I've come up against Beate Uhse, Alice Schwarzer, Uschi Obermaier and Rudi Carell. And possibly others who I can't think of right now. Hegemann uses them as a kind of shorthand - all her German readers will understand what narrator Mifti means when she describes her sister as a blend of Beate Uhse, Alice Schwarzer and Mother Theresa. But will anybody else?

On the other hand, the novel is very much tied in to its Berlin setting. The characters are Germans and their cultural framework is German - although of course, this being 2010, there are huge overlaps, with other famous people cropping up including Madonna, Brian Wilson and Bryan Ferry - just to list a few off the top of my head. So would it not seem odd if the celebrities scattered in didn't include any Germans, for local colour if you like?

Things get really tough when you go deeper into the moral and philosophical side of translation. With whom do my loyalties lie - the writer or the reader, the original or the translation? Is it disrespectful to Hegemann to replace her celebrities with people British readers would be more familiar with - or am I doing the readers of the translation a disservice if I don't help them to get the joke? Because in the case of Rudi Carrell, for example, it's hugely funny that someone would get a tattoo of a deceased Dutch entertainer who once came second-to-last in the Eurovision Song Contest.

In a certain kind of book, translators can work around this issue. Translator's notes, footnotes, building in three-word explanations - there are various options. But when characters are talking crap on Class-A drugs, the translator really can't slip in a quick bit of background detail on Uschi Obermaier. Or at least this translator's not going to. And there's always that tricky question of who's going to read the book in English - what level of knowledge about German society can I assume in the target audience? Who is the target audience? Am I being patronising or dumbing down the text?

I'm fairly convinced I really do have to come up with replacements. So far, so good - but who are the equivalents? Here's what I've come up with to date (bear in mind the translation is for the British market, and it's not finished yet):

Beate Uhse: Ann Summers
Alice Schwarzer: Germaine Greer
Uschi Obermaier: Bianca Jagger
Rudi Carrell: OMG, I have no idea. Terry Wogan? Bruce Forsyth? Dudley Moore? Actually, none of these will work very well - because why would a German taxi-driver get a tattoo of a British television personality? Oh, drat.

Any suggestions gratefully received, while I continue to lie awake at night wrestling with my translatorly conscience over the issue of intervention.

Voters Choose Top Crime Cover

They call it Bloody Cover. And you get what it says on the tin - the best German crime fiction book cover of the year.

Punters could choose from a shortlist of twelve covers, voting online or at selected libraries around the country. The winner is Westend Blues, a regional detective story set in Frankfurt. The Germans do love their regional crime.

Critics and Translators - A Match Made in Heaven?

Seeing as about half the books published in German are actually translations, critics over here often find themselves reviewing translated titles. It's not always easy for them to judge the translation quality, especially if they don't speak the original language. Translators, on the other hand, often feel neglected by critics, rarely or barely mentioned or picked upon for particular word choices rather than getting feedback on the general feel of their finished product.

Now translators - and I write this in the knowledge that I'm no exception - can tend to be a tad self-pitying. You know, we're largely invisible, we always get the blame if something sounds wrong, nobody comes to our parties, we might as well just curl up and die because no one would even notice... Yeah, we do a lot of eating worms, probably because we were all the odd ones out at school and so chose a solitary profession where we can hide behind books for the rest of our lives. Whatever.

In the past, that bitterness came out all unfiltered in the form of complaining letters to the editor and even a negative prize for critics who fail to mention the translator. But a month or so ago, the German Translators' Fund (DÜF) organised a symposium, bringing translators and critics together in Munich to work on ways around the problem. And being critics and having to earn a crust, a couple of those in attendance wrote about it. Andreas Breitenstein gives an intelligent overview in the NZZ, while Lynn Scheurer wrote about it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung - although they didn't put it online, just to rub salt in the wound.

Yes, they both wrote, it's tough for us critics, but translators don't have it easy either. Both of them liked the idea of using translators' forewords more often to highlight the effort and the ideas that go into a translation, though they realised that publishers probably aren't keen on the extra costs involved. They comment on the idea that it is possible to judge a translation's quality by the finished product alone, which is gaining ground and ought to make life slightly easier for critics. And they acknowledge that the state of play is pretty poor, with reviews often either ignoring the translator altogether or - almost worse in my opinion - finding a single adjective to describe the translation (smooth, fluid, the dreaded congenial) but providing no basis for that judgement, which they say is often the result of embarrassed ignorance - a critic being a generalist rather than a specialist. So the two sides appeared to have come together to some extent.

But then last week Katharina Granzin had a piece in the taz about the symposium. Let's just ignore the fact that it was published more than a month after the event - it's just paranoia, we won't listen to those voices telling us nobody cares enough about us to have run the article earlier. What I do have to say is, it really opened my eyes to what it must have been like in Munich. Because from the beginning, Granzin's tone is defensive. She lists the accusations hurled at the critics by angry translators: naivety, superficiality, poor education, no personality, never even tried translating themselves. She continues:

Incidentally, the critic is much worse off than the translator, organised in the translators' association and with excellent networks, who can at least often count on support from the translators' fund or other sources. The majority of German critics, in contrast, are not sitting in warm editorial offices but go about their precarious calling in cold, lonely garrets. These individuals, most of them with an excellent education and practicing their barely paid profession out of an idealism that is difficult to explain, are perfectly capable of recognising the translator's contribution and, where appropriate, willing to honour it in writing. This cannot and should not, however, be a compulsory exercise.

Leaving aside the fact that the DÜF and other sources support only a tiny percentage of translations and the fact that not one single translator has access to a "warm editorial office", the piece as a whole conjures up a picture of a critic majorly pissed off by the whole occasion. Here's what she recommends:

Perhaps translators ought to adopt the cleaning lady hypothesis: "Everything's fine as long as nobody complains." Should their call for more translation criticism really be about making translations better, they can also create specialised structures within their own networks.

I'm trying hard not to scream. Translators in Germany have created their own structures to improve the quality of translations, with workshops and seminars organised on a regular basis, mentoring programmes, residencies, a guest professorship, and many other fantastic things going on. The DÜF itself is the child of a small group of dedicated translators who spent a great deal of time applying for state funding, and now dedicate a great deal of time to supporting other translators. The professional association VDÜ also offers workshops, there are mailing lists and regular get-togethers where translators help each other with their texts. What they're doing now is approaching critics and offering them help to overcome the hurdle of commenting on translations.

And much as I admire the work of cleaning ladies, they too would probably appreciate a word of praise every now and then. I don't know though, I can't afford one for my cold, lonely garret.

Granzin defends her fellow critics to the hilt. Under the prevailing economic conditions, she points out, nobody's going to read the original, even if they're capable of doing so. And the translation challenges aren't always relevant, she says. Translation quality, she maintains, doesn't actually make or break a book.

I personally have two minimum demands of critics:

Firstly, if you mention the book's language, you have to mention the translator in the review itself. It goes without saying that the translator has to be mentioned with the bibliographical details.
And secondly, if you praise the translation, you have to tell us what you thought was good about it. Equally, you can tactfully ignore an uninspired translation if you like or you can go ahead and rip it to shreds - as long as you have some evidence, just as I'd expect for any other aspect of a review.

I'd be interested to hear what readers think - do you want to read about the translation itself in a book review or does it just leave you cold?