Food for thought at the British Library

When I heard about the Literary Translators: Creative, Cultural and Collecting Contexts conference at the British Library (which took place last month) I signed up straight away. It's been over a year now since I finished my MA in Translation Studies and I've been getting serious withdrawal symptoms for sitting in lecture rooms scribbling away while people say clever and interesting things about translation. To be honest, I think maybe I was secretly hoping for a pint in the student union after the conference was over…

I also wanted to find out more about the relationship between translation theory and practice. While I really enjoyed the theory side of my very theory-heavy MA and I think it's given me more confidence as a translator, I've often asked myself  how useful it is on a practical level. When you're sitting down on a daily basis to translate - usually fighting against terrifying deadlines -  you're unlikely to spare the time to think about how your work relates to post-colonial theory or narrative theory of translation.

So, it was interesting to hear Jean Boase-Beier's thoughts on translation theory, which she sees as something very personal and essential to a translator's work. In her view, it's not possible for a translator not to have a theory of their own, and she doesn't believe translators when they say they did something just because it 'sounds better'. To her, theory is like a personal philosophy, a way of looking at the particular type of text you're working on; and as Jean is a poetry translator, she's developed a theory of poetry translation to help her with her own work.

As an example, she showed us 3 different translations  from German of a poem by Paul Celan. There was so much difference between the versions that you could tell each translator was coming at it from a different set of values. Jean's priority is always the poem's style - rhythm, emphasis etc. -  with content taking second place. Another aspect of her theory is her openness in admitting that what the English reader is getting when they read her translation is not the original poet's work - it's her work, her own interpretation.

Jean has published a lot of articles about her theory of translation, and it reflects her personal relationship with translation, developed through the work she's done. I just hope that one day I'll have some time to sit down, gather together all the various theories and strategies I learnt about at university, and think about what my own personal theory of translation might be.

There were lots of other highlights to the day. I really enjoyed B J Epstein's talk about Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where she looked at how various Scandinavian translators dealt with Twain's use of non-standard language. She studied translated passages of dialogue spoken by Huck, his father, and a black character, Jim, all of which use slang and non-standard English. What she found was unsettling. In 73% of Huck's passages, the translators 'ironed out' the slang, translating into more standard language; they did the same with 53% of Huck's illiterate father's speech. But only 7% of Jim's language was standardized, making him - a black character - sound uneducated and comic alongside white Huck and his surprisingly well-spoken father. According to B J, this suggests some unconscious racism on the part of the Scandinavian translators…and when she showed us a shockingly primitive illustration of Jim which accompanied one of these translations, it looked like she was probably right.

I also really enjoyed hearing the views of playwright, novelist and translator Michael Frayn and poet and translator Ruth Fainlight, who have both translated literature from languages they don't actually speak, by working with somebody else's literal translation. Michael (who speaks Russian and translates Chekhov) said he used to campaign for plays to be translated by people who actually speak the language, but has grown to accept that playwrights can work from literal translations, and that a translation can actually improve on the original. These days he campaigns for the literal translator to get equal credit to the English playwright.

There was also a very interesting panel discussion about publishing literary translation in the UK, but I think that deserves a whole blog entry to itself!

The only real disappointment was that although I did get to relive my student days I didn't get my pint in the student union - but I did get a lot of food for thought, and that will do for now!