“For two months, 11 translators of different nationalities were tucked away in an underground ‘bunker’ near Milan where they worked under the strictest security to translate Brown’s new book into French, German, Italian and other languages for its simultaneous release on May 14.”

This opening hook is full of things we literary translators can — and should — take umbrage at:

* A 580-page novel had to be translated in two months
* They had to work in an underground “bunker”
* There was the presumption they would leak the story

The article goes on to say that to prevent any leaks, the translators did not have access to the Internet for research!

Just once, I would like to write an uplifting story about a blockbuster author and the translators dedicated to ensuring that a wildly famous book can be read by audiences all over the world. But it seems that one story prevails, and it is not a particularly happy one.

If you recall, last year I presented a guest post by Jill Timbers about the deplorable conditions JK Rowlings’ translators faced.

What I would like to know is the following…

* Were the copyeditors placed under similar restrictions? What about the typesetters? Printers? Book publicists? If a simple non-disclosure agreement is enough to keep these people “in-line,” why would that not work for translators? Is it because they’re “foreign”?

* And was the book designer forced to do his or her work, say, in two days? Or the copyeditor in a week? I mean, come on, how much time would they need if a translator can pound out 580 pages in two months? That’s 10 pages a day, every day, for 60 days. That’s about 2500 words a day. Of final, publish-ready text.

What are we, monkeys with typewriters?!

What’s worse, the article brings this situation to light as if it were an amusing anecdote rather than a serious comment on how little respect this author or his foreign language publishers have for the literary translator’s work.

There is no mention of what the translators earned in terms of fees and/or royalties, no word on whether they hold copyright or all of the other terms and conditions most professional associations promote. Given what we do know, I wonder whether these translators were treated as professionals and accorded their due.

I’m in the process of trying to find that out and will bring you what information I can.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the article and the whole situation. Do leave a comment!

Lisa,

I am writing to ask about crediting the translator for a book. Where should I specify that my name appear?

Rhoda

~~~~~

Rhoda,

First of all, congrats on what seems to be an upcoming book translation! That’s great.

As translators, we always want to be credited on the cover of a book, below the author’s name, in a font size that may be smaller, but not drastically so.

Clause 6 of the PEN Model Contract (which I encourage every literary translator to use) states:

The Translator’s name shall appear on the cover and title page of all editions of the book, and in all publicity and advertising copy released by the Publisher, wherever the author’s name appears, in a type size not smaller than sixty (60%) percent of that for the author’s name. Publisher agrees to print Translator’s approved biography on the back flap of the hardcover edition, on the back cover of any trade paperback edition of the Translation, and the title page of any electronic edition.

Many publishers, however, object to putting a translator’s name on the cover. They may argue it’s against their policy. In that case, the best back pedal scenario would be to ensure your name is on the inside title page. You may also try to negotiate getting your bio on the back cover. This worked for me on the first book I translated, The Matter of Desire.

More important than that, though, is that the work be copyrighted in your name. Otherwise, this is what is known as a work-for-hire situation and it is not recommended by any professional association that supports literary translators.

Indeed, PEN’s FAQ notes that “…given the restrictions associated with them, the Translation Committee does not recommend that translators accept work-for-hire agreements.” [emphasis mine]

Readers, what has your experience been in terms of credits on your translated works? Anything else to share?

Spotlight on Literary Translator Edward Gauvin

LC: What language(s) and genres do you translate?

EG: I translate from French. I’m working on improving my Mandarin, as I was raised with the language and so speak it fluently, but read like a kindergartener at best. Aside from the odd news article or business document that floats my way, I work mainly in comics and prose fiction. In the latter category, I gravitate toward all things fantastical—that includes fantasy, fabulism, horror, magic realism, and occasionally, science fiction. 

LC: How did you get started as a literary translator?

EG: I hung around conventions and queried comics publishers, asking for work. I also took it upon myself to submit translations to literary magazines, starting with Words Without Borders in 2005. It may not seem so long ago, and WWBwas already going strong, but receiving translations was new to most journals and reviews; I often got positive rejections from editors happy to see international fiction. I also worked in foreign rights for a year, an invaluable experience that gave me a sense of the market, of the legal arcana affecting translation, and editorial contacts here and abroad, though those weren’t as immediately useful as they might sound.

LC: What do you love most and least about this work?

EG: The most rewarding part for me is sharing the previously inaccessible, and knowing you helped in generating enthusiasm that matches or exceeds your own. What keeps me going, however, is the inherent imperfection of the task; it holds out something like a promise of the definitive that is continually deferred. There is “getting it right,” and then there is returning the next morning, or in a year’s time, to endless second thoughts. Quite apart from language aging, you have your own regrets.

I also like the tinkering feeling of getting down to a text’s nitty-gritty, language at a level of nuts, bolts, and washers—which makes it all the more amazing when, through careful syntactical jiggering, you manage to preserve the balance of a sentence like a mobile of beautiful pendants.

I hate the paperwork, like invoices, but that’s more part of freelancing than translation itself. I suppose I don’t like mean authors. I dislike the deep-seated belief that languages are essentially transparent and translation a mechanical activity. Despite what I just said about perfectionism and regret, seemingly endless debates over shades of meaning bore me, though among translators they constitute a beloved conversational genre. Nor am I, in a somewhat related vein, invested in the endless retranslations of classics; there is, after all, so much good work out there…

LC: Can you tell us a little about a recent project?

EG: I recently published Pachyderme by Frédérik Peeters (SelfMadeHero). A Lynchian, surreal, and atmospheric graphic novel of memory and desire set in a Swiss hospital, hailed by no less than Moebius himself as a masterpiece. This is Peeters’ third book in English, and my personal favorite from his oeuvre. The author’s expert handling of pacing, color, and dialogue manage to make the very experience of reading a lucid dream. This was a windfall, one of the few times a comic I loved already was picked up by a publisher and then sent my way. I’ve written on it at length before at Weird Fiction Review.

Forthcoming is Jean Ferry’s The Conductor and Other Tales, due out in November from Wakefield, a discerning tiny Cambridge-based press devoted to the obscure and eccentric. Though Ferry (1906-1974) made his living as a screenwriter—best known for his collaborations with Clouzot, Buñuel, Louis Malle, and Georges Franju—he was involved in many notable movements of 20th century French literature. He was a satrap of the College of ‘Pataphysics, an Oulipo guest of honor, and the greatest specialist of his day in the works of Proust’s eccentric neighbor, Raymond Roussel. Ferry’s only book of prose, The Conductor and Other Tales, was published by Gallimard in 1953, under the editorship of Jean Paulhan, and recently brought back into print with new material in 2011 by the small Bordeaux press Finitude. André Breton is said to have taken Ferry’s wife Lila as the inspiration for his book L’Amour fou, and called Ferry’s story “The Society Tiger” “the most sensationally new poetical text I have read in a long time.”

My translations of Ferry have appeared in The Coffin Factory, The Café Irreal, and Weird Fiction Review, and are forthcoming in Sentence and Subtropics. I landed this gig, actually, because while chasing down rights to the piece I wanted to publish in The Coffin Factory, the French publisher told me an American publisher already had plans to publish the book. The editor turned out to be someone mutual friends had been encouraging me to contact.

LC: Edward, I love your relentless pursuit of publishing opportunities! Thanks so much for sharing your experience.

Dear readers: Please leave any questions or comments for Edward Gauvin in a comment!

The winner of the John Dryden Translation prize, Clarion alum Edward Gauvin has received fellowships and residencies from the NEA, the Fulbright program, the Centre National du Livre, ALTA, BILTC, and the Lannan Foundation. His volume of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper(Small Beer, 2010) won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Other publications have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, and PEN America. The contributing editor for Francophone comics at Words Without Borders, he writes a bimonthly column on the Francophone fantastic at Weird Fiction Review.

Spotlight on Literary Translator Jim Kates

LC: What language(s) and genres do you translate?

JK: French and Russian poetry. Or from Russian and French, because Russian has been pushed into the foreground over the years. In collaboration with those far more educated and interesting than I am, I have also worked with other languages—most comprehensively, translating Latin-American Jewish poetry with Stephen A. Sadow. (See A Voice Among the Multitudes: Jewish Poets from Latin America, Northeastern University Libraries: 2011) And over the years I keep dipping back into Latin.

LC: How did you get started as a literary translator?

JK: That depends on what you mean by “get started.” With the arrogance of adolescence, in high school I translated four lines Ovid from Latin into French as a headnote for a French-class book review. In college I translated for my own reading, and enjoyed the process and a few of the products.

LC: What do you love most and least about this work?

JK: What’s not to like?

LC: Can you tell us a little about a recent project?

JK: I don’t translate “projects.” I translate poems. Occasionally these swell into full manuscripts of a writer (of which I have three or four) which attract little or no attention from publishers. Still, in the obstinacy of growing older, I go on.

LC: Jim, thanks for participating!

Dear readers: Please leave any questions or comments for Jim Kates in a comment!

J. Kates is a poet, literary translator and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press, a non-profit press that focuses on contemporary works in translation from Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry in 1984 and a Translation Project Fellowship in 2006, as well as an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts in 1995. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems: Mappemonde (Oyster River Press) Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing) and The Old Testament (Cold Hub Press) and a full book, The Briar Patch. (Hobblebush Books). He is the translator of The Score of the Game and An Offshoot of Sense by Tatiana Shcherbina; Say Thank You and Level with Us by Mikhail Aizenberg; When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree and Secret Wars by Jean-Pierre Rosnay; Corinthian Copper by Regina Derieva; Live by Fire by Aleksey Porvin; and Genrikh Sapgir’s Psalms. He is the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era. A former president of the American Literary Translators Association, he is also the co-translator of four books of Latin American poetry.

Dear Lisa,

I need some advice on how to price a book translation for a short travel and faith narrative of just under 27,000 words. The author of the published German book has given his friend, my potential client, the rights to the publication of any EN translation (though I only have a verbal statement to this effect and am not sure if I need to see a release signed by the author or publisher). My potential client (an attorney) has asked me to do the translation. He is a fellow alumni of my university and has asked for an “alumni rate”. He also would like to be the editing partner, but he does not speak German. I want to give him a few options – i.e. just translation by me with him as the editing partner and an option with me as the translator and another translator as my editing partner – he could then edit as well, but I just think it’s a good idea to have 2 pairs of professional translators working on the text. I don’t usually do book translations so don’t know what the going rates are. I don’t want to price too high and miss out on the job, but also don’t want to sell myself short. I have seen the model contract on the PEN website and would probably use that as a basis, especially since it deals with royalties, advance payment, mentioned credit for the translator, etc.

I know you are very knowledgeable in this area and would appreciate any advice you can spare.

Best regards,

Sarah

~~~~~

Hi Sarah,

Sounds like an interesting project!

Every book translation is different, but here are a few thoughts I can share:

* I would definitely ask to see written confirmation that your potential client has permission for English publication. This will be essential if the book is to be published, so you don’t want to go to all the trouble of doing the work only to find that your client doesn’t actually have the rights.

* Check also where the rights are for. Sometimes worldwide English rights will be granted, sometimes only for a particular country. If, in this case, the rights are for a UK English publication, say, then you will need to make sure the translation conforms to British writing style, etc. (Indeed, I wouldn’t recommend that a US translator undertake a work for publication in the UK. There are too many differences.)

* What you charge is entirely up to you. There are no set or standard rates for literary translation (in the United States at least). Is your client American or German? I ask because some countries, including Germany, do have suggested and/or legislated guidelines for fees and/or rates. I remember that a couple of years ago German translators won a court case mandating royalty rates, so you could use this as a guideline. I’m sorry I can’t find the exact info, but if you search the German literary translators association you will likely find it.

See also this blog post I wrote with some general info about rates.

* Rates can also vary depending on how you’re getting paid. For example, you might accept a small(ish) up-front fee, but ask for a higher percentage of royalties. Or no up-front fee and a split in royalties. This all depends on you, your own personal circumstances, and that of the person paying you. There are no absolute rights or wrongs.

“Payment” may also consist of having a published work. That might be worth a lot to you if you are just starting out and want to pursue more publication opportunities.

* Rates vary, too, depending on who is paying you. Is the agent/rightsholder going to pay you and self-publish the book? It sounds like it, if he’s asking for an alumni rate. This indicates he’s probably not willing to pay a lot.

Alternatively, is he going to use your work to find an English publisher? Will you be involved in that search? If a publisher is found, the publisher would pay you for your work, so all you’d need to provide at this point would be a sample (a few chapters) to interest them.

* Rates tend to be on a per-project basis, which are loosely calculated on the per word rate. Remember, though, that literary translation will take much more time than other types of translation, and not all of this is compensated for. It’s simply a more labor-intensive endeavour.

If you normally do, say, 2000 words per day, you can easily cut that in half for literary, so keep that in mind when you’re quoting on time.

* I would definitely use the PEN model contract. The American Literary Translators Association also has a model contract and some very good guides to translation and publishing  (all of which are free).

* Giving the client options is definitely a good way to go, in terms of how the work will be done and also payment options. People who have never been involved in translation before, particularly literary, will be taken aback by how long it takes, what it costs, what’s involved, so education through options often helps.

* If you’re going to have another translator/editor involved, consider what those costs might be, too. Will that person want a share of royalties? Up-front payment?

It’s definitely a good idea to have a partner/editor, particularly if your client is considering self-publication. As an attorney, I’m sure he writes well, but perhaps not the way the book will need to be written/edited for publication. If your name is going to be on it and it’s not going to a professional publisher who does all of that, you’ll want to make sure the final product is excellent.

Sorry there isn’t a more clear-cut answer to any of your points, but I do hope some of this has helped.

Wishing you the best of luck!

Readers: Any points I missed or you want to expand on? Please share in a comment.

can have a prose style.

- Ben Yagoda, The Sound on the Page: Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing

Consider for yourself:
 

1. Do you agree with this statement?          Yes ___           No ___                        I don’t know ___

2. Does style matter in translation?             Yes ___           No ___                        I don’t know ___

3. Do you consider style in translation?       Always ____      Sometimes ___     Never____

This is how I began two full-day workshops called Style and Translation lately. The answers participants gave at the start and the end of the class often varied, going from an “I don’t know” or even a “No” at the beginning of the session to a “Yes” at the end.

If you’d like to ponder these questions in more detail and see how style is as much as part of literary translation as the words themselves, I invite you register for the next session of my online course, Defining Writing Style, which begins Monday, April 22.

Regardless, I hope you’ll share your thoughts on these questions here, in a comment!

Spotlight on Literary Translator Lucas Klein

LC: What language(s) and genres do you translate?

LK: The languages I translate from are classical and modern Chinese. By classical I mean wenyanwen, or what’s sometimes called “literary Chinese,” and which was the written language of all formal and literary writing from the bronze age to the early twentieth century; despite the fact that it’s the same language and the grammar stayed the same for thousands of years, vocabulary and especially linguistic conventions did change, which means someone might be more familiar with some periods than others, and I’m most comfortable with writing from the Tang (618 – 907).

By modern I mean standard written Chinese, which is closest to Mandarin or Putonghua when spoken, but which is also what Cantonese looks like when it’s written formally (that is, I can translate from formal written Cantonese, even though I can’t speak it very well; I suppose I could translate from colloquial Cantonese if it were written down, but it would take a very long time, and there’s not much literature written in the Cantonese vernacular. I notice I’m going into this much detail only because I’ve been living in Hong Kong for two and a half years).

My main interest as far as genre goes is poetry, both medieval and modern / contemporary. Modern poetry is usually written in modern Chinese, though poetry in classical Chinese still gets written today. I’ve also published translations of short stories, essays, non-fiction, and academic prose from modern Chinese, and prose from classical Chinese.

After I lived in Paris a decade ago a non-literary translation I did from French was published, and I think I had a couple poems translated from French published as well, but I couldn’t really do that again.

LC: How did you get started as a literary translator?

When I was an undergrad, double-majoring in Literary Studies and Chinese, and taking creative writing classes here and there on the side, I decided that literary translation must be the hardest kind of writing there was, and therefore the most interesting. My logic was that you had to produce something that was almost as good as the original, but not so good that it would take the place of the original and keep people from learning that language so they could read it as it was originally written. I’m not sure what I think about that anymore, but I remember it being a revelation.

From there I read Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, which showed me how translations were such an intricate process of reading, and only became more convinced of my earlier decision. I also think this had to do with being a bit disaffected and dissatisfied with the courses I just mentioned I’d been taking: caught between literature classes that were on the one hand very intellectually stimulating but at the same time rather alienated from the emotional connection I thought should be inherent to the reading experience, and then creative writing courses that were energizing and inspiring but a bit allergic to considering meaning, I turned to literary translation as a way for me to reconcile both experiences without sacrificing my antagonistic attitude, since I could still be opposed to how both programs overlooked translation. Anyway, one of my senior theses both included and was about translation, and from there it only deepened. A couple years later, starting to work for a literary journal while living in Paris, I told the editor I was interested in translation; “You’re a translator!” he asked, and, instantaneously crossing the bridge to being from being interested in, I said, “Well, yes!”

LC: What do you love most and least about this work?

LK: What I love least about the work is how roundly and thoroughly it’s ignored. We have been pretty successful at making sure that translators are at least mentioned by name when our books are reviewed, but we’re still in the one- or two-word evaluation ghetto (i.e., “faithfully translated by,” or “superbly translated by,” or “perfunctorily translated by”).

But let me give a more immediate example: I teach in the Translation program of the department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong, where each year our raise is calculated based in part on our research output (teaching and service also count). And yet when we publish translations—whether it’s a poem, an article, a book, or whatever—it is not considered part of our output. Let me go over that one more time: I teach translation in a translation program in a department whose name contains the word translation, and yet when I translate, it’s not considered part of my work. I’m hired to teach students about translation, but they learn from people who have no incentive to publish or even perform translation. This is an insult to me and to people like me, and I think it should be an embarrassment to the managerial staff of my university.

And it’s an extension of how often translators go unpaid or underpaid, unacknowledged and overlooked. The idea, of course, is that anyone who is bilingual can do it, though if this were the case I can’t imagine why there would be a need for translation programs in the first place. So what I hate best about translation has little to do with translation itself, but rather with how the act of translation is perceived (I mean, I hate translating when the piece I’m working on is boring, but that’s not really particular to translation; I hate conversations with people I find boring, too).

What I love most about the work is how all knowledge seems to be able to be organized according to instances of translation, and when you’re working on something, any moment could be a revelation of access towards such organization of knowledge. That sounds pretty abstract, so let me see if I can break it down a bit.

The word “cipher” is an instance of many translations: it came to Latin from Arabic şifr صفر, which means “empty, zero,” which was itself a translation of Sanskrit śūnya शून्य, meaning “empty”; but it also describes translation in more ways than one: it’s both a code, or something that needs to be deciphered or translated, but it also refers to a person who is a non-entity, both there and not there at the same time—like a translator. These are the reasons I named the translation-focused literary journal I founded “CipherJournal.”

In a less philosophical way, we come across examples like this all the time when we deal with common expressions. I was telling my class last semester how it’s natural to think that expressions have always been in our language just because we heard them first in our language. For instance, they assumed that “double-edged sword” had always been a Chinese expression, and that the English version must have been someone’s translation of the Chinese. My assumption was the opposite, and I had a lot of circumstantial historical evidence on my side (there are many English expressions that have found their way into Chinese in the last hundred years, but I can only think of “saving face” as a Chinese expression that’s gained currency in English, and words like ketchup from Cantonese): I explained that in classical Chinese, a sword,  jiàn 劍, needed two blades, whereas dāo 刀, which today means “knife,” would have one. Digging a bit deeper, though, I found that the expression probably originated in Persian or Arabic. And it makes sense, too: in Europe, swords were also always double-edged; only in the middle east, where swords could be curved, single-edged sabers, would remarking on the double-edginess of a sword make any sense.

LC: Can you tell us a little about a recent project?

LK: I have a number of projects going on right now. A long-term project to translate late Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin (ca. 813 – 858), a nearer-term project translating seminal contemporary poet Mang Ke (b. 1951) for Zephyr Press, and an academic book on how translation theory can be used to elucidate the relationship between Chinese poetry and shifting concepts of “world literature,” as well as a few recent ones, including Endure (Black Widow Press, 2011), a collection of Bei Dao translations I did with the poet Clayton Eshleman. But what still excites me most for the purposes of this spotlight is my translation of Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems of contemporary Chinese poet Xi Chuan (New Directions, 2012).

Notes on the Mosquito covers Xi Chuan’s career as a poet from when he began writing lyrical poetry in the mid-eighties to the expansive prose poems he writes today, and in translating it I had to get in touch with all sorts of matters of cultural and literary history involving China and the rest of the world, which offered me all kinds of revelations along the lines I was discussing above.

Xi Chuan is a very allusive poet, though he’s also very accessible (think Ezra Pound meets Jorge Luis Borges), drawing on a wealth of cultural knowledge for his poetry; this meant that I got to trace his references as he wrote about finding a brick engraved with Sanskrit in southwest China, or pearl falcons in the Liao dynasty (907 – 1125), or transcription on wood in the iron age.

He’s also a very internationally-minded poet, and so his allusions are not only to Chinese history, but to the interactions between China and the rest of the world (in fact, I’d say that his interest in ancient China follows his interest in Borges and Pound), which I also got to trace as he wrote about his travels to Xinjiang, or the Sand Sea Scrolls, or Paradise Lost in the Dictionary of Modern Chinese.

There are also moments where, as a translator, I had to challenge received notions of fidelity: at one point he compares something to the emerald green of bok choy; this is a nice image, but the problem is that bok choy in Chinese means “white cabbage,” so I had to find a way to bring out the play of colors unmatched by the nomenclature. I went with “as purple as red cabbage.”

I have a blog to promote Xi Chuan and Notes on the Mosquito, called “Notes on the Mosquito” and online at http://xichuanpoetry.com. You can find links there to reviews of the book, as well as to ordering information and earlier versions published in lit. mags. online; you’ll also find links to other goings-on in translation and Chinese poetry, as well as many other of my writings on translation (I write a lot of book reviews; it’s one way I try to give back to the community of writers and translators—and I got the opportunity to translate Xi Chuan because of a book review I wrote). I expect it will go on for a while; there’s a surprisingly large amount of material online about translation and Chinese poetry available for sharing. And as my new projects come out, I imagine I’ll be making announcements there as well.

Finally, and without a doubt my most important project, I have a young son (born January 12). He’s a translation, too, since we plan to raise him (at least) bilingually!

LC: Lucas, what a pleasure it was to interview you and to ponder all you have to say on this topic! And congratulations on what will undoubtedly be your greatest translation: your son.

Dear readers: Please leave any questions or comments for Lucas Klein in a comment!

Lucas Klein—a former radio DJ and union organizer—is a writer, translator, and editor. His translations, essays, and poems have appeared at Two Lines, Jacket, and Drunken Boat, and he has regularly reviewed books for Rain Taxi and other venues. A graduate of Middlebury College (BA) and Yale University (PhD), he is Assistant Professor in the dept. of Chinese, Translation & Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong. With Haun Saussy and Jonathan Stalling he edited The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound (Fordham University Press, 2008), and he co-translated a collection of Bei Dao 北島 poems with Clayton Eshleman, published as Endure (Black Widow Press, 2011). His translations of Xi Chuan 西川 appeared from New Directions in April, 2012, as Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems (for more, see http://xichuanpoetry.com), and he is also at work translating Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin 李商隱 and seminal contemporary poet Mang Ke 芒克<>.

Hi Lisa,

I saw an exchange recently where a British translator was asking for advice about American terminology. I got somewhat indignant about this at first, then saw things more rationally and calmed down! But then other UK to US translation requests followed, and I realized I do have strong feelings about this, and I wanted to run them by you, my friendly local literary translation expert!  

My thoughts are along the lines that someone with (apparently) no/limited knowledge of US language should not be agreeing to translate a book into US English. My rationalization was that maybe it had been requested rather than the translator having volunteered to do it. I also thought maybe the publishers will go through and Americanize the finished translation.

Do you have any experience in this regard? Do you know if British translators often translate into US English or vice versa? Or whether publishers would review translations for this type of issue? I guess it is the same thing as me (having predominantly a Spanish vocab from Spain, but some knowledge of Latin American Spanish) agreeing to translate into Latin American Spanish (language direction issues aside!). I guess I wouldn’t see anything wrong with that either, and yet Latin Americans out there may be shocked at my lack of understanding of their lingo!

I hope you don’t mind me bombarding you with these questions! But I feel like these are issues you have discussed in the past so you might be able to throw some light on the subject for me.

Joyce

~~~~~

Joyce,

You make a few interesting points for sure. It is quite odd for someone from the UK to do a translation into US English, and questions that show a lack of cultural knowledge can certainly be annoying.

Although, I must point out that as a Canadian, I do actually translate for the American market. The difference? As you know, our cultures are more aligned (than UK and US) and I have a ton of exposure to US English — almost more than Canadian in some ways!

You’re probably right that the translator was contacted by the publisher, rather than the other way around. That said, it’s still not the best choice. The Brits and us (North Americans, that is) do things very differently, from style (quotation marks, m-dashes, punctuation) to vocabulary/usage, culture and everything in between.

It is unlikely that the publisher will have the book “Americanized,” per se, as an additional step. I do, however, imagine it will be edited by an American editor and then copyeditor, who will likely smooth these things over.

It’s hard to say without knowing what exactly the book is about, but it’s a fair guess that this will be more work for the editor…

I don’t really know how prevalent this sort of cross-cultural translation is. Personally, I would not agree to translate a work for the British (or Australian or New Zealand or South African) market because I would not feel I could capture all of the overt references, let alone subtleties of language and culture. Not only would I not want to let the editor down, by making him or her do more work, but ultimately I would not want to let readers down.

In the translator’s defence, however, it may be that he or she didn’t realize just what an undertaking this would be when accepting (or pursuing) the project. Sometimes that happens!

And, indeed, upon realizing this, the translator may (by this point) have decided to work in partnership with a US translator, or have the work fully edited before it goes to the publisher. There are ways to make this less-than-perfect situation better and deliver a quality product.

Readers, what do you think? Would you translate a work of literature into a variety of English or other language with which you were not intimately familiar? I’d love to hear differing viewpoints!

Up front dislcaimer: I have translated one short story (by Hernán Vanoli) for their first anthology and am busy with another (by Giovanna Rivero) for the next, so my enthusiasm is not entirely unbiased…

That said, this is a fabulous publication for many reasons, as you’ll discover below, and worthy of all the attention it’s getting. Do leave a comment or a question. I know both Rodrigos would love to hear from you!

What is Traviesa, and how did it begin?

Traviesa is an online literary magazine and digital publishing house focused on contemporary Spanish-language fiction. The magazine offers a glimpse of authors’ lives and desires: we feature video interviews, correspondence by email and Facebook, a day in the life section, and recommendations of writers’ favorite books, places, TV shows, and so on.

We also publish themed anthologies curated by guest writers. The curator selects a theme, writes a prologue, and chooses four texts by authors from different Spanish-speaking countries. Our first anthology was Knockoff, curated by Argentinian writer Federico Falco, chosen as one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists. All content on our site and in our anthologies is available in English and Spanish.I met Rodrigo Hasbún in upstate New York, where we were both studying Latin American literature at Cornell. We were part of an informal writers’ workshop and got to talking about the dearth of Spanish-language fiction available in the U.S., especially by contemporary writers. At the same time, we were struck by the limited rights and royalties these authors received when they did publish. We decided to create a project that would expose the work of contemporary writers and compensate them in a fair manner.

How does Traviesa differ from other literary projects in Spanish?

Rodrigo Hasbún is from Bolivia and I’m from Guatemala, two countries already on the periphery of the publishing industry in Spanish, which to this day remains centered in Spain, and to a lesser degree in Argentina and Mexico. We saw Traviesa as an opportunity to showcase excellent writers from all over the Spanish-speaking world, whether or not their work had reached Spain’s major publishing houses. Established publishing houses typically give up to 25% of e-book royalties to their authors, despite the fact that the costs of producing an e-book are relatively low. We give 80% of royalties to the writers, translators, and curators who contribute to our anthologies.

Tell me more about the concept of curator.

We see writers as the people with the best grasp of the contemporary fiction scene in Spanish, yet they rarely have the chance to select texts for publication. By appointing curators, we give writers a more central role in the publishing process—and because we’re drawn to our curators for their fiction writing, we’re especially interested to see what texts they’ll choose.

Our curators have already exceeded our expectations, beginning with their choice of themes — Federico Falco picked “the knockoff,” Liliana Colanzi is putting together an anthology on messianic narratives, and Yuri Herrera is compiling stories on bad luck.

Where can we read more about Traviesa?

You can find us in the following places:

• The online magazine is here.
• We’re also on Facebook and Twitter.
• The ebooks can be purchased there, too.
• There’s a trailer video for the first anthology, Knockoff, on Vimeo.
• And the Argentine publication Página 12 recently published a longer article here.

You’re off to a great start and I wish you ever more success!

Rodrigo Fuentes (Guatemala, 1984) won the prize Juegos Florales Hispanoamericanos de Quetzaltenango (2008) with the story “Cámara ocura.” His stories have appeared in the anthologies Asamblea Portátil: Muestrario de narradores iberoamericanos (Casatomada: Perú, 2009), Sólo Cuento III (UNAM: México, 2011), and Ni hermosa ni maldita (Alfaguara: Guatemala, 2012). He’s the Literary Editor for suelta and is currently working on his first book of stories.

Born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Rodrigo Hasbún has published two books of short stories, Cinco (2006) and Los días más felices (2011), and the novel El lugar del cuerpo (2007). He was awarded the Latin Union Prize in 2008 and was part of Zoetrope: All-Story issue dedicated to emerging Latin American fiction. Two of his stories have been adapted into the films Rojo and Los viejos, for which he co-wrote the screenplays. In 2010 he was selected as one of The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists by Granta magazine.

Spotlight on Literary Translator Lydia Razran Stone

LC: What language(s) and genres do you translate?

LRS: I work exclusively from Russian into English, although I can understand and communicate in other languages. Over the years I have translated literary prose, plays and poetry. Recently when I retired from supporting myself through translation I have been concentrating on translating metric rhymed poetry (mostly 19^th and 20^th century) into analogous English format. However, my biggest paid job this year was putting together a bilingual issue of a literary journal devoted to Leo Tolstoy, for which I translated all the Russian, as well as writing commentary.

LC: How did you get started as a literary translator?

LRS: As soon as I started reading Russian literature in Russian in college I knew I wanted to translate it. I got my first job as a literary translator working for a graduate school professor, translating critical material for an edition of Fathers and Sons. My full time paying work as a translator was mainly devoted to technical subjects because of the need to make a living. I first learned that I could translate rhymed, metric poetry into its English analogue when a Russian native speaker friend brought me his attempts to translate such poetry and songs into English and I felt the need to make radical corrections. I have been translating such poetry ever since and gradually, mainly through publishing in ATA publications and participating in the Literary Division’s poetry readings at ATA conferences, have gotten referrals. I have published three bilingual books of poetry, of which the most recent contains translations of 62 poetic fables by Ivan Krylov, the Russian answer to Aesop and La Fontaine. This book, The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar, was published by Russian Life Books and is available on Amazon.

LC: What do you love most and least about this work?

LRS: What I love most is doing the actual translation, especially working with my translation partner Vladimir Kovner, a native speaker of Russian, and working with living poets. I love giving readings even more than seeing my work in print. I have not translated any plays in a while, but when I did I loved seeing them performed and watching the audience react to my words. I love the feeling of not knowing how I can possibly deal with some line or lines and then finding I have done it. This reminds me of seeing a complicated turn or obstacle when cross-country skiing and then realizing you have gotten passed it unscathed. The poems I most like to translate are lucid with elements of humor and irony.

What I love least is having to find 70-year copyright holders (estates and widows, mainly) in Russia and convince them that I am worthy to be given or sold translation rights and even more failing to get these rights and having good work go unpublished. I also am not fond of having a project come to an end since I am always afraid I will not be assigned or think of another I find equally interesting.

What is most difficult for me is poetry that is metric and rhymed but metrically irregular in the modern style.

LC: Can you tell us a little about a recent project?

LRS: I have been working with my partner Vladimir Kovner to translate songs and poems by Bulat Okudzhava, a leading figure in the artistic and political bard (singer-songwriter) movement that began Soviet Union in the 1960’s and continues today. This was only one of our many collaborations but was the hardest one for me since Vladimir had been a fervent participant in this movement and insisted that I convey every nuance of the songs. In addition, because these were songs rather than poems, lines of the same song would differ metrically, which I found very hard to render. We presented the results of our project at the 2011 ATA and were fortunate to have a singer and guitar player render some of my translations to the audience—which was absolutely great. We are now trying to contact the reclusive widow of the singer and if we can get copyright permission have a potential publisher for a bilingual songbook.

My most recent ATA project involved comparing 25+ English translations of a very famous 19^th century Russian poem along all the dimensions I could think of.

LC: Thanks for sharing your experience, Lydia, and particularly your poems. Fabulous!

 Dear readers: I’m sure Lydia would love to hear from you in a comment below!

Lydia Razran Stone has an MA in Russian languages and literatures and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology. She has been ATA certified for Russian to English translation in 1983. Her most prolonged assignment as a technical translator involved 10+ years of translating and reporting on space biology and medicine for NASA and editing a 5-volume joint NASA –Russian Academy of Sciences book on the subject. For ATA she has served on a number of committees, been a Russia-English grader for almost 20 years. She is proud of starting and frequently MC’s the Literary Division’s poetry reading session. A founding member of the Slavic Language Division she has been the editor of its publication, SlavFile since 1995. Lydia has made at least one presentation at every ATA conference since 1991, many of them devoted to poetry and other literary topics. She has been translating the poetry for Chteniya (Readings) a quarterly journal of translated Russian literature since its founding, has published poetic translations in a number of other online and print journals, and was the translator of 3 bilingual books of Russian poetry, of which the most recent is The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar, Russian Life Books, 2010, available on Amazon.