Be faithful, but not too faithful.
Putting our heads together: a translators’ forum held at the British Council and organised by the Society of Authors
28 February 2008
The complexities of translation cannot be underestimated, as the lively exchange of opinions at this one-day conference proved. Ostensibly a forum for gathering best practice for translators and editors alike, the occasion proved interesting for highlighting both how easily the editor-translator relationship can go wrong, and how vital it is that it doesn’t.
‘Be faithful, but not too faithful’ was the advice of Hanan Al Shaykh, author of the novel Only in London, who used her experience of being translated into English to introduce the event. She stressed the importance of maintaining the spirit of the book as a whole; translation, she said, is about ‘work of the heart’.
It fell first to Rebecca Carter, editor-at-large at Random House, to set out her ideal translator/editor relationship. Editing, she emphasisied, is crucial for any text, quoting the example of the translator of a Chinese novel who insisted on editorial advice, even though the translation was good. As a result, she rewrote most of her translation; now it is excellent.
Rebecca was sympathetic to translators who found themselves in conflict with their editors over the interpretation of a text, but was relieved to be able to say that this had happened to her rarely. The key, she believed, was for the editor to establish a good and respectful working relationship with the translator, so that they could take time to discuss any differences of opinion and hopefully resolve them.
One of Rebecca’s tentative best practice suggestions was warmly endorsed, namely that translators should ask if the editor who commissions a sample from them might be prepared to do a sample edit of the sample translation so that they could check they were on the same wavelength. Sandra Smith, with whom Rebecca worked on Suite Française, did this; it ensured a good working relationship from the outset.
As an editor with Harvill for eight years, and a translator of many books, Euan Cameron is ideally placed to see both sides of the debate. He made a number of cogent best practice suggestions for editors:
> choose the right translator (age, knowledge) – different languages bring different problems
> convince the translator of your merits
> promote the book in-house
> involve the translator in the publishing process
> don’t alter the translator’s text without discussion
> consult the translator on jacket blurb and design
> invite them to the launch party
> keep them up to date with review coverage
In return, translators should take heed of their editors’ advice – they will look at the text with fresh eyes and consider it as an English book. Euan believes that editors should have the last word, because they represent the author.
He also emphasised that translating fiction is difficult, requiring invention and imagination. This theme was taken up by the third editor on the panel, Martin Riker of Dalkey Archive Press, who went further, describing translators as ‘artists’ who should be encouraged to take risks in order to reproduce the energy and style of the original work.
Because Dalkey publishes literary fiction from thirty countries, it is impossible for their editors to have a working knowledge of every one of these languages. For Martin, the most important thing about an editor is that they can edit, although he also stressed that they also have an important role to play as ‘great readers of the work in English’. By the time they’ve finished with the book, it has to ‘sing’.
This is particularly true of Dalkey’s books, many of which are stylistically innovative and bring to the translator additional challenges. Barbara Wright, for example, has had to cope with slang, wordplay and puns in her translation of Queneau’s fiction; here, Martin said, risktaking was essential.
His other thoughts can be summarised thus:
> Few english-language writers are translators. This is not true in other cultures.
> Editors should avoid getting into a state of constant compromise with translators – it will flatten out the translation.
> The editor and translator must communicate
> The editor should leave the translator alone until the first draft is complete
> Editors should use an outside reader
It was then time to hear about the process from the point of view of a translator. Ros Schwartz, who has been translating books into English for 27 years, spoke eloquently about her work and praised the good editors with whom she has worked.
Her first words mirrored Martin Riker’s about the difficulty of translating effectively: translators, she said, are subjective; they have to make endless choices in order to preserve the author’s intentions. There are, she said, no clearcut rights or wrongs, but if you eliminate all traces of foreignness you lose the very sense of foreignness that is interesting. In other words, ‘you colonise the writer’.
Ros went on to describe in a nutshell the tensions inherent in the publishing process: the publisher wants to sell the book; the translator wants to be loyal to the book; and the editor wants to be loyal to the author. In order to avoid a meltdown from the word go, she suggested the following:
> Translators need to be explicit about what they do, right down to confirming whether they will be, for example, writing an introduction to the book
> It is useful for some translators to have early contact with their editor
> The translator should alert editors to errors missed by the foreign publisher
> Editors should give feedback to translators and allow them to correct errors themselves
> It is not heplful when an editor introduces alternative words, acting as ‘translator manqué’
> The editor should inform the translator of the production schedule; it’s no use being given galley proofs the day you’re rushing to catch a holiday flight.
As with most working (and non-working) relationships, it seems that the keys to a successful editor-translator partnership are communication and respect. When the task at hand is as subjective as translating a book from one language to another without losing the sense of the original but at the same time making it accessible to English readers, it’s no surprise that the process can go awry.
The final purpose of this delicate work, however, is common to publisher, editor and translator alike – make the English-speaking world aware of these extraordinary books. This shared aim is what all the people at this forum strive for on a daily basis, and why their exchange of views was so passionate.
James Smith
March 2008
