Casu Consulto

Being a Writer and a Translator

Translating literature is basically rewriting it from scratch—you have to take what you’re reading, and rephrase it in a way that’ll be appropriate for the culture you’re translating into. It’s hard to reconcile the inner writer, with the constant “I’d do this differently” thoughts, with the translator’s task of trying to match the author’s original style and not changing the story. The task is made much harder if you’re also a writer, and if the work you’re translating falls outside of the genres you normally read, or if it falls within certain genre conventions that you don’t like.

Do the Legwork on the Paperwork

If you’re like me, and you’ve never had to come up with a contract for a translation job, trust me, ask for advice. If you get advice that says “just Google it, there’s plenty of templates out there,” look further. Ask more people. Do the Google search, put together a contract, and then ask someone to look it over. Ask your friends, ask in forums, get a second opinion (and a third, and a fifth). Don’t just assume that just because it looks pretty good to your untrained eye, it’s fine. If the person you’re signing the contract with makes changes, make sure you get someone else to look them over. I’m speaking from experience here — things I said would fall under my purview in the conversations before the contract didn’t make it in there, and things that shouldn’t be my responsibility did.

Learn from Your Mistakes

If you’re like me, just starting out in the field, you’re bound to make mistakes. Don’t get discouraged. One job that doesn’t go quite the way you thought it would doesn’t mean the end of the world. Get the job done, do the best you can under the circumstances, and carry on. There will be other jobs, other opportunities to do better. Don’t sweep the mistakes you’ve made under the carpet, though. Remember them, learn from them, and keep them in mind so you don’t make them again.

Don’t Give Up

It’s a difficult balancing act—staying involved in the work so you get it done on time, and at the same time remembering to step back when needed so you don’t get discouraged and disheartened and start to dislike the work. Because if you don’t like what you’re doing—and this goes for writing your own stuff, too… hell, it goes for any job you do—it’ll show in the final product, and it’ll affect your ability to work in the future. And if you can’t make it work, well, maybe you shouldn’t be doing the work.

Mirrored from Tangents and Digressions.

So I'm reading this novel right now that I might be translating, and I keep thinking about translations and how the different languages and different styles translate across to various audiences. I'm not a super-experienced translator (which is why I keep bemoaning the lack of more literary translation under- and graduate programs in Polish universities - I know that sworn translation is where the money is, but a little more diversity would be nice), so I can't really judge the technical aspects of the translated books I've read, so I'm speaking as a reader rather than as a translator. Although now that I've studied some aspects of it, it's kind of hard to turn that part of my brain off.

A few years back, I saw the movie Night Watch, which was based on Sergei Lukyanenko's novel of the same title. And I loved it, and wanted to know more about the world Lukyanenko created. Seeing as I was working in a bookstore at the time, I took advantage of my employee discount and picked up the three books in the series that were available at the time. I started reading Night Watch, but I never finished, because the translation read so awkwardly to me that it kept jarring me out of the novel. I don't remember what exactly it was about it that made me stop, but I suspect the translator had attempted to maintain the style and diction of the original language, which just doesn't work for me. I don't really know Russian beyond a few words and phrases, but iirc it's similar to Polish (they're both Slavic languages, but Polish is West Slavic, and Russian is East Slavic, although I expect they have some commonalities) and I imagine that just as Polish sentence structure and syntax don't really translate straight across, Russian wouldn't either. There is a translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita where the translators specifically said in the introduction that they tried to maintain the original style and diction, and it made for such awkward reading that I ended up finding a different translation (and eventually ended up picking a Polish translation, which read better, possibly because of the similarity of the languages?) (that reminds me, I really should try and finish reading that one of these days).

This one is a romance novel with a strong intrigue subplot, and while it reads similar to other novels that have been pretty popular lately, plot-wise, it's actually quite easy reading. I haven't read enough in Polish lately to be able to say whether it's well written, but as a reader, it's good enough to keep me engaged and turning the pages. It's slightly formulaic, but that doesn't make it a bad read. I've tried to read some Polish translations of less-than-reputable popular fiction, and it was a bad experience all around. Although I guess I have to give kudos to the translator for maintaining the style of the original (which was hard to read not just because of plot/characterization elements, but also because it was badly written).

I don't know. Again, I'm not really experienced enough in translating, so I'm not speaking as a translator, only as a reader. And while I'm sure some of my impressions are colored by what I've studied, and what I've started picking up automatically (ask me about how much I hate watching movies with voice-over translation on TV *shudder*) I think most of my reading experience is still that of a reader. It's sometimes hard to shut off my inner translator, though, so I notice things that seem artificial, like purposefully imposing characteristics of one language onto another, and with the combination of "reader" and "translator," they don't always work for me the way they might work for other readers.