International Translation Day 2011

This year’s International Translation Day, held at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon last Friday, felt very different from the previous year's event. There had been a fair amount of frustration aired in 2010 about the barriers that still stood against getting translations published in the UK. But last year’s delegates haven’t been sitting around bemoaning the status quo; they’ve been doing something about it, and the mood this year was resoundingly optimistic.

The director of English PEN, Jonathan Heawood, pointed to the number of organisations who had come together to run the day, giving strength in numbers, and the fact this year’s event was heavily oversubscribed.The outgoing chair of the Translators Association, Daniel Hahn, introduced the morning panel discussion by talking about his excitement at the way things are going. The session celebrated success stories, including our own bestselling title, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which has now sold in excess of 300,000 copies – in spite of the philosophical themes that some booksellers and publishers feared wouldn’t appeal to a UK audience. Sarah Ardizzone reported on the progress of the Translation Nation project, which sends translators into primary schools to encourage children to value their own language skills and perhaps one day become translators themselves.

Rachel van Riel of Opening the Book talked about ways of encouraging readers to try translated fiction in libraries, through creative visual displays that encourage risk taking. She trains library staff not to lie about the difficulty or difference of a book, but to celebrate it. She also showed us a great website, whichbook.net, which allows readers to choose a book based on a sliding scale of preferences between safe and disturbing, gentle and violent, optimistic and bleak and so on. You can also choose books based on the country they’re set in. A good deal of translated fiction is thereby opened up, without being explicitly marketed as such – they’re just good books, like any others.

French to English translator Ros Schwartz gave an account of the translation mentoring schemes set up in the past year by the TA and others. At last year’s event, Ros challenged publishers lamenting the difficulty of finding a good translator to do something about it. Ros underlined the fact there is little provision for professional development for translators and the close, mutually enlightening relationship translators once had with editors is rarely found these days.

For the past year, Ros has been working with us at Gallic to mentor a group of fledgling translators, including myself. She ran a workshop with us in April in which she emphasised the fact that translation is a fine balance between retaining the spirit of the text and creating a readable English version. Academic training tends to lean towards fidelity, leaving you fearing you’ll lose marks if you don’t represent every word of the original in your translation, so it takes some adjustment to allow yourself to be freer and trust your instincts as a writer. Our first mentored translation, Eat Him if You Like by Jean Teulé, translated by Emily Phillips with guidance from Ros Schwartz, is out in November.

These mentoring schemes not only provide the chance for translators to hone their craft, but also to learn to market themselves and network – equally important in securing work, as Nicky Harman and Rosalind Harvey emphasised in their session on getting started as a translator. They encouraged translators to begin by translating short stories and offering them to publishers, so as not to spend too long on something they might not get paid for. But Nicky Harman reminded translators that apparently peripheral activities, like contributing to websites or blogging about translation, can be powerful tools for getting your name out there. She reminded us that in spite of the new mentoring schemes making it easier to get your foot in the door, there is still a lot of legwork to be done in order to get yourself noticed.

Other afternoon workshops included a discussion on languages in schools (despite the employability of language graduates, uptake of language GCSEs has dropped by an alarming 50% over the last ten years); the introduction of a new English PEN grant for translations; getting foreign authors into literary festivals; translating minority languages and aiming for greater coverage in the media.

The closing session saw us all singing in the round as conductor Charles Hazlewood applied the theme of translation to music, showing how the same idea could be reinvigorated by a new interpretation. I hadn’t imagined I would end the day listening to The Prodigy, but it reflected the spirit of the day: shaking things up and moving forward to an exciting future.

Comments

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[Lift Repair and Installation]

This is good post about International Translation Day 2011 and very informative. thank you its great blog.

[Legal translation services]

This is a great and very informative post. Also, I made sure to bookmark your blog so I can come back later.

[Veronica]

I would like to add something about legal translation: make sure you know what type of certification your translation shall require in order to be accepted before the embassy or any other recipient body.

Because even if your translation agency offers certification service, they usually aren't in a position to check your requirements from their end. That is why, being a citizen of England, you should always use trusted translation companies with UK-based acceditations. Only then you can be sure your work will be done well and by a professional specialised in the required field.

[Veronica]

I would like to add something about legal translation: make sure you know what type of certification your translation shall require in order to be accepted before the embassy or any other recipient body.

Because even if your translation agency offers certification service, they usually aren't in a position to check your requirements from their end. That is why, being a citizen of England, you should always use trusted translation companies with UK-based acceditations. Only then you can be sure your work will be done well and by a professional specialised in the required field.

[Walter]

I agree with the comment above.
And I would also like to recommend to have a look at the translation agency in order to hand in your translation. You could go and see your project manager in person, either to hand in your documents, pick up your translation, or go over whatever it is that has come up as an issue face to face and, at the same time, ensure that it is a qualified translation agency.

[Cicero Ril]

"Translation DAY"? Isn't that a bit like "BREATHING day"???

[Sam]

I think it's absolutely necessary that there is an International Translation Day. People should be made aware of what a hard piece of work translation is. Many people are oblivious of how important a concise translation can be in reflecting the client's professionality. For example is having a text translated professionally by a translation agency generally very important but especially if you need it for business purposes. It is not enough to have your text translated by someone who knows the target language. Translators are specially trained on adapting your text to another culture which can make a massive difference when acquiring international clients, believe me.