Translation Industry Day at the Society of Authors

I spent yesterday at the Society of Authors in London for an Industry Day put on by the Translators' Association. My level of excitement and nerves about going child-free to a professional conference was probably rather daft, but it was an excellent event and I'd have been bang on time if I'd turned the right way on leaving Gloucester Road Tube station...

Richard Rogerson [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Speakers included publishers, editors and translators, as well as people from the TA/SoA. There was encouragement about the state of literary translation in the UK. From Briony Everroad (Harvill Secker) we learnt that there were 102 entries for this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize from 44 publishers; she also raised the tantalising possibility that the Stieg Larrson effect might help previously averse publishers to learn the ropes of commissioning translations - everyone wants their bit of Nordic Noir, and maybe this will spread to other genres.

Katherina Bielenberg (Maclehose Press), Bill Swainson (Bloomsbury) and Stefan Tobler (And Other Stories) were among those who talked about the processes and economics of publishing, and what it actually takes to get a beautiful book to the reader.

There was also useful stuff about contracts and negotiations, plenty of opportunity to meet and chat with other translators, put faces to names, do a bit of networking, discover useful resources and lovely-sounding books. And a very nice lunch!

In all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable and useful day, which left me feeling inspired as well as much better informed. I'm going to have to make a point of getting to these things more often - Norwich really isn't a million miles from London, after all...

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The Two Things About Translation

I was intrigued by this article in Saturday's Guardian Magazine: The Two Things (by Oliver Burkeman from "This column will change your life").

An economist walks into a bar. This is a true story; it's 2002, the bar is the Lava Lounge in LA, and the economist is an academic named Glen Whitman. He gets chatting to a fellow patron and mentions his line of work. "So," asks the stranger, "what are the Two Things about economics?" "Huh?" Whitman replies, confused. "You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are only two things you need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important."

See also Glen Whitman's original blog about the idea.

Anyway, this all got me thinking about the Two Things about translation. As Burkeman says:

People like the Two Things exercise so much, [Whitman] believes, because it forces them to extricate themselves from the weeds of detail and see the terrain of their own expertise afresh. The question gets you back to basics [...]. It also pinpoints the contradictions at the core of many professions.

Now translation is such a wide field that at first I thought it would be impossible to summarise it in just two points. Are we talking literary or non-literary? Does it matter which languages you're working in or what you're trying to achieve with your translation? But then a very simple answer came to me:

1. Do justice to the source text.
2. Do justice to your readers.

It seems to me that this highlights the tensions of translation and can be applied in any field and to any approach. All translation is ultimately trying to convey a source text to a reader in a new language. We might try to do justice to the text by replicating its style as closely as possible, or by adapting it so it can be seen afresh in a different light. We might try to do justice to the readers by making the text as enjoyable as possible to read, or by transporting them to a new place.  If we're translating an instruction manual, we do justice to the readers by making it possible for them to follow the instructions. If we're translating a piece of classic literature, we do justice to the text by producing a translation that is equally well written. And so on.

So there we are - my Two Things. Do you agree with mine? What would yours be, for translation or anything else? I'd love to know!

Why I Love My Job...

I am currently working on a translation of a little illustrated book on the life and works of Gustav Klimt, and having such a lot of fun with it! Art nouveau is atyle that appeals to me, yet I previously knew very little about the Vienna Secession - the period in Klimt's life I'm working on at the moment. My ideas of Klimt's work were pretty much limited to The Kiss and similar. Now I am aware of his academic phase, portraits, murals, landscapes... I just love being able to exercise my brain, improve my general knowledge and read an interesting book all at once. And I get paid for it. And, hopefully, the end result will be that other people get to find out all about it too.

In other news, spurred on by Kevin Lossner's post on finding good translators over at Translation Tribulations, I have applied to join the ITI, the UK  Institute of Translation and Interpreting. I had looked at their website before and found it rather daunting, but this time I have bitten the bullet and sent off the forms. Their exam will follow in due course and I'll let you know how I get on!