Frustrations

At the recent ALTA conference, many people were griping about rights. And it makes sense. It can be the hardest part about being a literary translator. Trying to work through the system to find out if anyone is allowed to translate this story, let alone if you personally can get permission. One publisher talked about their encyclopedia-esque phone book of foreign rights departments, full of tiny, out-dated information that you could only read with a magnifying glass. Another publisher said that tracking down proper rights was akin to (pardon our language) a "f***ing goat rodeo." Apt.

So, I suppose it really shouldn't be surprising that two months after first reaching out to a small French publishing house, after filling out their website's contact page and emailing their general address and emailing their rights address and sending their foreign rights manager a message through LinkedIn, I still haven't heard a thing. I'll be calling them today.

If there's still no response, well, I'll be in France early next year. Maybe I should just go knock on their door.

Pirates!

Pirates are infinitely more interesting than common sailors. Society supports this as fact. We have "Talk Like a Pirate Day" (last Wednesday, for those playing at home), not "Talk Like a Sailor Day."

Random?

Not really. You see, I'm doing research on 18th century nautical terms, in both French and English. There are a few glossaries and dictionaries out there, as well as meticulously labeled diagrams, but it's easier to learn and understand the terms in a context.

Looking for such historical context, one can turn to a few different places. Textbooks (can be dull), ship's logs from the era and other primary sources (excellent, but the old-style spelling can be hard to wade through), or historical fiction and non-fiction stories. Interest-peaking AND historically accurate!

After all, pirates sailed on the same ships as everyone else.

Exit Waking World, Enter Subconscious

I had a very vivid dream this morning just before my alarm clock went off.  It was an Indiana-Jones-meets-video-games puzzle, a carnival booth in a dank cave in which I had to open a chest in order to receive my prize, or move onto the next level, or not die (dreams are sometimes weirdly non-specific about motivations).  There were pressure plates, and supplies for small explosives, and pulleys and levers, and buckles and snaps, and lots of sand.  And an egg, but I don't think that's relevant. I had to use contextual clues to figure out how to open the chest, plus a healthy dose of trial-and-error.  What happens if I connect this buckle to this pulley, then to this pressure plate?  Nothing explodes?  Okay.  What if I connect all six pressure plates to the same weight?  The chest moves closer?  Great.

Of course I woke up before the dream ended, but I'm still intrigued.  Puzzles!  Logic!  Mental tests!  Tips from the context!  Trial and error!

Oh.  I must be translating literature again.

:-)

Translators are writers, too.

One of the perks of working in a publishing house is the ability to ask anyone a question that should be common knowledge, but isn't, either to you or to the general public.  (These could also be called "stupid" questions, but let's be nice here.)  I asked a question to the senior editor recently that I thought was relatively benign: "How many of your translators have literary agents?"

Well, as it turns out...none.

Well, one does, but he's more of a foreign rights go-between from France.

Why does this matter?  Not all authors have agents.  But many do, including all the big bestsellers.  And look closer: the contract for a book-length translation is, more often than not, paid with a certain sum per 1000 words.  In most instances, literary translators are contractors, providing work-for-hire.  Which maybe makes some semblance of sense to some people, but not for me, and not for many others.

Literary translators are authors.  They are creative minds.  Literary translation is not a process of "what does this mean?", which is similar to summaries and reviews and college-level literature classes.  Instead, it is a process of "how can I best convey the words, the style, the meaning, the metaphors, the language, the feel of this work of art into my own language?".  It is a creative process, albeit a transformative one.

I'm not going to belabor this point, mostly because there are others out there (*cough cough Chad Post at Three Percent**) who expound this point much more lucidly and better informed than I can.  But why is it general consensus -- so much so that I shared this opinion before I seriously considered translation as a career -- that translators perform a service instead of creating a piece of their own?  It's not something commonly thought of.

Think of that today.  Think of a book you love that was only made possible by a translator: Don Quixote for Americans, Shakespeare for Germans, Proust for Russians, Tolstoy for Chinese.  Think of that, and you have my blessing and thanks.

Go little guys!

(Slightly OT)

In my spare time (haha), I work at a small, non-profit publishing house, The New Press.  They're really cool, see here: http://thenewpress.com/

It's not often that one of our books pops up on any bestseller list.  Let alone the New York Times' paperback non-fiction shortlist.  But after The New Jim Crow started with a modest print run of 3,000 back in 2010, here it is now at #5 on the bestseller list, for the second week running, in the company of Tina Fey and Malcolm Gladwell:

http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/paperback-nonfiction/list.html

Go Michelle Alexander, go The New Jim Crow, and go The New Press!  We may be small, but we're playing in the big leagues now.