Translating without rules

There are all kinds of lists of ‘Translators’ Rules’ bandied around. The Arablit blog ran a whole series of them with many a useful tip included, such as breaking up your translating with other tasks (a financial imperative for most, and a way to preserve your mental health) and seeing yourself as a writer, not just a humble servant to the text.

The trouble with these sorts of rules is that they sound very sensible in theory, but in practice are not so easily followed - and then you just end up feeling bad. For example, ‘Only translate books you love’. Fine once you’re established and have the luxury of cherry-picking projects, but a translator at the beginning of his or her career is grappling for whatever he or she can get. And I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing. The more genres and styles you experiment with, the more rounded your experience and the more comfortable you will be tackling a wider range of texts later on. You might not generally enjoy romance or crime, but being ‘forced’ to translate it might give you an appreciation of the author’s skill in creating characters to empathise with, or a page-turning plot. Having a certain critical distance from the book, rather than being caught up in reverential admiration for it, could actually be a good starting point for pulling the text apart and putting it back together again.

‘Check queries with the author’. Clearly not an option if the author is no longer with us, as is sadly the case with Pascal Garnier, one of my favourite authors on Gallic’s list, whose noir How’s the Pain? I have just finished translating. There are occasional bits in the French which don't make complete sense to me, or to my mentor who is overseeing the project, but the book has surreal moments anyway so I'm inclined to think the ambiguities are intentional and should therefore be maintained in the English. In any case, you don’t really want to be sending the author loads of questions, because you want them to think you’re a competent enough linguist to get by on your own.

One of the cardinal sins for a translator is not reading the whole book before you start translating it. Here, I have a confession to make. I’m currently translating the latest romantic thriller by Guillaume Musso, which tells the story of two people who accidentally switch smartphones, discovering all kinds of secrets about each other by reading texts and emails and studying the pictures and documents stored in their phones. I had time to read about half the book before I really needed to crack on with translating it – it’s due with the copy-editor in February. I had intended to keep reading ahead, but have had a lot of other reading to do, so a time came just before Christmas when I caught up with myself. My pace up until then had been about 2000 words a day at most. Since launching into the unknown, I’ve accelerated to more than 2500 a day. I’m getting to a point in the story with revelations on every page. I need to find out what happened to Alice! This urge as a reader to keep turning the pages is speeding up my translating, and I hope, giving it the same pacy rhythm as the French. Clearly there will be sections that will need revisiting in light of what I discover later on (the protagonist, Jonathan, has just met a girl who may be from the US or Manchester, he’s not sure; clearly I do need to be sure, to make sure I’m not having a New Yorker be ‘madferit’), but re-drafting is par for the course anyway.

(Though, on that note, the advice to do a million drafts, leave the text alone for months before coming back to it, show it to everyone you know including your vast pool of friendly expert native speakers... is all great if your deadline is some time in 2015.)

While sharing experiences is very helpful in what can be a lonely profession, it’s important to remember that everyone works differently, and the end result is more important than how you got there. After all, translation gives you enough to worry about on its own, without beating yourself up about the way you go about it.

Comments

[Katy Derbyshire]

So, so true! Thanks so much for this, it made me feel much better after having to just stop reading that Arablit series.

[Emily]

Thanks Katy! I chuckled reading your blog post on the glossy lifestyle piece about the translator's beautiful bookshelves. My 'library' is a jumbled bookcase and my 'study' the kitchen table, with inspiring view of the boiler!

[Kim Sanderson]

I have also heard recently (sorry can't remember where) that a translator who hadn't read to the end is putting themselves in the same position as a reader, which can have its advantages.

[Samuel Evans]

Really good post. Thanks for the perspective! It's true, the important is the end result.

[froilyn]

I'm guessing it only gets worse when language barriers come into play as well. It's rather easy to fall into the trap of exacerbating the pitfalls of the trade itself by trying to get the linguistic side of it handled in-house by staff who aren't trained linguists.
It might look like an unnecessary cost increase at first glance, but I'd always recommend using language professionals for financial translation, the risk you run without them is sure to cost you much more in the end.

[books]

These comic books tend to receive more critical recognition and acclaim. Examples include American Splendor, Strangers in Paradise, Ghost World, and Sandman.

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