Practical Life Lessons

Compiled from the lives of fictitious characters from Allison's current translation projects. (Sometimes, you can learn from other people's mistakes. Even other fake people.) 

Be careful of promising a girl that you'll get her a new kitten exactly like the one she just had to get put down. It could lead to a marriage proposal.

Don't switch clothes with your best friend at age eight. You'll end up in a convent for life. Until she feels bad, comes to rescue you, and then dies after being hit by a cannon that's snapped loose from its ropes on a ship you're not supposed to be on in the first place. Seriously. 

Be wary of women who tell you that you've been brainwashed into forgetting that you were once a wise man atop a camel. She may just be trying to lure you out to the desert in a sandstorm.

If something's too good to be true, it probably is. No, the President cannot sign a decree to turn you into your favorite fictional character. 

Don't throw dead people down a dried-up well. They may not be dead. Also, they have friends. 

BONUS: Never tickle a sleeping dragon. (As the Doctor says, good ol' JK!) 

Selective Writer's Block

Is there such a thing? Because I sure as all heck feel like I have it. 

Yesterday, I blew through translating the end of a chapter in probably around half the time it normally takes me. Smashed my own personal page-to-hour ratio record in the process. No particular reason for working so quickly besides everything just gelling really well.

On the other hand, I haven't written hardly a word of solely my own creation in a couple of weeks. This blog has ground to a halt; a currently in-progress original short story is just sitting there, waiting for inspiration that isn't coming. And I want to pull my hair out. (Maybe not my hair. I love my hair. Maybe a fingernail or two instead.)

A lack of creativity isn't the issue. I've been possibly overly proud of a couple of sentences I've translated, and a number of workarounds to tricky translation problems that I've dreamed up. But I hadn't been able to think up a new blog topic in...(hang on, counting)...sixteen days. Not a ton, but all the same, whoops .

Sigh. 

Granted, I thought August was going to be my month to work up some of my own writing (and finish editing some summer-produced translations), but then a sample popped up for my favorite ladies. And a contest which I just have to enter, if I can track down rights for the story I want to submit. And another sample, upon request, for a publishing house. Those might just be getting in the way. Maybe. Perhaps. A little. Around the edges.

Ever so slightly.

A tad. 

History must not repeat itself. But it is.

I have a new book in the editing phase right now, but that's not important. The story it tells, however, is extremely important.

Once upon a time, there was a Jewish girl born in Erfurt, Germany. When she was five years old, her family decided to flee to Belgium, because they thought it would be far enough. They had family there. Later, they were all forced into refugee camps in the south of France. The family was separated, reunited, separated, and reunited again. And then the roundups came in Nice. A police officer who knew they were sending the Jews to their deaths gave any parents a choice: leave your children here, and an NGO will come to pick them up. They'll have one more chance at survival. This girl was left behind with her younger brother. She never heard from her parents again. 

The children managed to get to an Italian relative, a high-ranking diplomat who was secretly brokering the armistice between Italy and the Allied forces in neutral Vatican City. When news of the armistice broke early, the children were forced to flee into a remote Ligurian village with the diplomat's butler. They spent the final two years of World War Two sheltered there by Italian Catholics through countless raids by and firefights with German soldiers. And they survived. 

After the war, the girl, now a teenager, moved to Paris. 

She still lives there today. 

And I got to meet her. 

This was a difficult and perplexing meeting for me. I'm a young woman from the United States. That war was not on our soil. (We haven't had one on our soil since...a long long time ago in a seceding country not so far away.) My grandparents were too young to enlist; my great-grandparents were too old. I've never had a one-on-one conversation with a veteran, let alone a survivor of the Holocaust.

And yet, I had been writing this woman's story, in her voice, for three months before meeting her. What other questions could I ask? I didn't have many left, so I just let her talk.  And I learned more.

This woman lost everything in her life, multiple times. Her home, her parents, then her life's work in middle age. Her best human and non-human friends in the same week, just last year. She is saddened and burdened by all of this, yet she keeps living. She speaks no words about the unfairness of life, she does not complain about how hard it all is. There is just a moment of silence and reflection to accept such things, and then life continues. She is quite the formidable force.  A force of normalcy.

And yet her heart aches, because the world is not changing. It is not learning from her story, nor from the millions of others like it. Hitler and the Nazis killed Jews, and cripples, and gypsies, and homosexuals. Anyone who wasn't like him. But that same thing kept happening. And is still happening, in Syria, in Africa. 

These stories must be told, loud and clear and over and over again, until such things, such atrocities, stop happening. 

So I will be a storyteller. Otherwise, I just feel helpless. 

Networking Works

It also nets you profit. (Sorry. Couldn't resist. Anyway. Back to serious business.)

The Internet is a wonderful tool for freelancers. You can find and court new clients, work jobs, get paid, and talk about everything, all without leaving your desk.

But in the era of email, Facebook, Skype conferences, webinars, Twitter, scans, texting, all the connections you could possibly ask for...one is missing. One connection, the face-to-face human connection. It gets lost in the ease of doing business. And it's a shame, really.

I took a trip to NYC last week to reconnect with old and make new contacts, but the most important part of the trip was the the five different meetings I had with colleagues I've already been working with for months, or even years, solely through email. Maybe the occasional phone call, if we're lucky. And it's so hard to read emotion and personality via email.

For all the work I've done with these people -- a project manager, a publicist, even my editor -- I didn't really know anything about them. Not how they smile, not even how they speak. And it's hard to feel secure in a business relationship without that personal connection. It's hard to trust someone's judgement with your creations if you can't look them in the eye when asking questions. 

After meeting in person, that trust builds up the other way, too. Five wonderful meetings later, I got numerous offers of "how can I help you as we move forward?" or "here's a good editor, should I pass your name along?" or "you are on our list for this type of job, right? no? I'm putting you on." So much future potential from the people I was already working with, just because we finally got to look one another in the eye and have a lovely conversation over a cup of tea or a glass of lemonade. (It was hot last week.)

So yes. Do it. Try to meet everyone you work with in person, at least once. Set up a meeting if you pass through their city. Go out of your way to end up in their city, if you must. It'll be worth it. 

In Which My Favorite Magazine Perpetuates a Terrible Stereotype

The debate is still raging over how best to review literature in translation (see this Words Without Borders collection for a primer), and the struggle continues to even get it reviewed in the first place. In the meantime, though, everyone seems to have agreed on one thing:

Good translations don't read like translations.

The highest praise you can give a translation right now, if you don't read the source language, is that reading it feels like you're reading something in English (or whatever language it's been translated into), not an awkward, grammatically-identical rendering of the original language.

This stereotype, this easy criticism, that translations generally read badly in the target language, is one of the main reasons that mainstream publishers are so hesitant, even averse, to publishing works in translation. It's an opinion that we're trying to get changed.

So I suppose I was surprised, as I reached the April 1st issue from my backlog of The New Yorker magazines, to read the Shouts and Murmurs humor/satire column, Gavin Shulman's "Taxicab Conversation," subtitled, "The important call that every New York City cabdriver is on: a translation." It begins:

Driver: Hello.
Caller: Hello. What is up? 

Oh dear. Please, don't tell me. By writing "What is up?" instead of "What's up?" or "How're you doing?" or even "How are you?," this is automatically a translation. Right?

Maybe that's how your stereotypical cabdriver, who speaks English as a second or third or fourth language, might speak in English. But even if their native language's greeting translates directly into "What is up?," without any conjunctions, no translator in their right mind would render any character using such stilted phrases in their native language. Now, this is either trying to poke fun at non-native speakers' broken English, or it's showing a "normal" translation. A bad translation.

But weirdly, the piece is not completely free of conjunctions. Both the caller and the driver occasionally use them. And the writing isn't completely littered with awkward phrasing. This exchange is rather natural:

Caller: Are you listening to music?
Driver: Yes. The prayer mix you made me. Everyone loves it.
Caller: Good.

Instead of saying something stereotypically awkward, like "Yes. I am listening to the prayer mix that you made for me," the driver sounds more conversational here. Still, with the amount of "That is good"s and "You are right"s and "Is the city very pretty?"s, the reader can't help but be biased towards negativity.

Let's take a step back, though. The New Yorker is known for its remarkably finicky and stringent rules of style. For comparison, then, here are excerpts from three other recent Shouts and Murmurs columns.

"Apologies," by Cora Frazier, 4/22/2013:

I know I shouldn't have pointed at you from across the room, saying, "Isn't that guy hot?," ignoring the instructions of my teacher, Jason. (I'm sorry, Jason. You make it burn, and I love you.)

"Most Gwyneth!," by Paul Rudnick, 5/13/2013:

I ran to my therapist, and I begged her, "Can I really have it all? Most Beautiful and Most Hated?" She paused and then said, "You know, I've treated Jennifer Lopez, John Mayer, and the entire Kardashian family, along with a supermodel who refers to overweight people as sofas. So I know what you're up against."

"J-Day," by Yoni Brenner, 5/6/2013: 

Hitler: Is there no way to suppress it?
Göring (shaking his head): I’m afraid not. It’s just too catchy. We’ve had reports of humming and unsanctioned falsetto singing along the front lines, from Finland to North Africa.
Jodl: To be honest, if I were alone I’d probably be humming it right now.
(Suddenly, Hitler has an epiphany.)
Hitler: I’ve got it: we’ll kidnap him!

All perfectly conversational, while still retaining enough readability and stylistic clarity to be published in The New Yorker. Thus, Shulman's cabdriver really is the outlier.

But it gets worse. "J-Day" sets its scene in Germany, 1942, with Generals Göring, Himmler, and Jodl. A note mentions the following: "In keeping with Nazi protocol, they speak in sinister, heavily accented English."

So. Fictionalized, satirized German generals are speaking English as a second language with grace and fluidity, even as they retain a higher tonal register (e.g. "unsanctioned falsetto"). A month earlier, in the same column of the same magazine, a fictitious, satirized cabdriver speaks English as a second language in fits and starts, haltingly. Exactly as the general public incorrectly expects translations to read.

Or perhaps I'm just paranoid.

But most people wouldn't give that much thought to the matter. Readers of The New Yorker are, by in large, highly intelligent and widely educated, but the stereotype of bad translations is too prevalent. Highly intelligent people who aren't involved in the translation industry are apt to miss that part of the satire, the part where it makes fun of how translations are viewed. Because that's just how everyone knows them.

Maybe it's even worse. Maybe I'm even more paranoid. Mr. Shulman may not have even been trying to inject satire into those two words: "a translation."

Pay It Forward

When you start out in an industry, any industry, you have a lot of things working against you. A lot of roadblocks, or obstacles to overcome, depending on your point of view. One of the most looming and glaring is the lack of contacts.  Every piece of advice for job seekers includes the instruction, admonishment, whatever, to networknetworkNETWORK your little butt off because you're never going to get anywhere without knowing people. 

And it's true. It's tough to hear, and tough to implement, but true. 

When you're just starting out, and don't know anyone, and have to suddenly make lots of contacts, it's scary. Terrifying, for some. Fear puts on the brakes, gets in the way. Fear of rejection, fear of no response, even fear of being a mild annoyance in some Very Important Person's day. 

"Why would the thrice-published Senior Executive Vice-President Experienced Person who knows everyone else in the industry be willing to talk to lil' ol' me, even for a twenty-minute informational interview?"

But here's the thing: most of them will. A lot of them are happy to help newbies. Everyone was a newbie once, no matter how unlikely that may seem.

I learned that two ways. The first, from Ramit Sethi, who writes a blog called I Will Teach You to Be Rich.  His posts convinced me to go try talking to people I admire. And when I did, I found that every single person I've reached out to to date has responded to me. Most have taken the time to have a conversation with me. At worst, I learn something new, and at best, I have a new business contact who gives me a job.

People are nice. 

I'm nice, too. (Hopefully, most of the time.) So when I got an email from a woman older than I was asking how I got started in literary translation, I didn't demur and shy away. I didn't cite my lack of expertise and beg off. Because even though I've only published one book, I have published a book. The "getting started" part of my career is over; I've hit the growth and expansion phase.  We exchanged messages and ended up having a lovely conversation.

And then a colleague of mine sent along a woman who was looking to get into French translation. I gave her my small mountain of info. (Maybe it's a large molehill. Not sure on that.)

Then I signed up for the mentoring program through my alma mater's alumni office. Now, I get about one email per month with recent or almost-grads who are curious about translation, literary or not. There's always the caveat that I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I help however I can. And it feels awesome.

It's a source of pride to be able to help guide new translators down a helpful path, one that takes some shortcuts to the most effective methods of finding your footing. 

And then, at the same time, there are lots of contacts and mentors who have done the same for me. I still look up to them. I still ask them questions. And I try to check in with all of them every little while, because I am making strides in my career, and they deserve to know that and be thanked. (Christmas cards are a great way to do this.)

This turned sappy. Eventually, it'll all just become a huge circling cycle of paying it forward. 

Which, I think, is the way it should be. 

Secrets of a Literary Translator, Volume I

You get to read and write all day.​

​Workdays can be spent in pajamas, or in your garden. Or both.

You can spend hours in a bookstore and leave with lots of new books. It's research. It might even be tax-deductible. Have your cake and eat it, too, and then have more!​

Interesting people who have written interesting books are willing to meet you. They may even want to meet you.​

Same goes for interesting people who have been written about in interesting books. Even better.​

​Spending time in your adopted language's country is also considered research. Travel is encouraged, if not required.

There isn't enough time in the world to read everything you want to. But you have a good reason to try.​

Bad News is Better than No News

There's something really wrong with bad translation practices when they start getting picked up by international news. In English, from The Telegraph.​ In French, from Le Nouvel Obs. These are the terrible conditions that translators for the major European languages had to endure and agree to in order to translate Dan Brown's latest work, Inferno. From February 15 to April 5, they worked 12 hours per day, 7 days per week, in an underground bunker, with limited Internet access, no way to take notes on their work, and no copy of the final product they delivered at the end.

All in the name of making sure that no spoilers were leaked.

This is madness, I tell you. But this isn't the first time such conditions have been imposed on translators. Another high-profile example came with JK Rowling's work, both the later Harry Potter books and her new one, The Casual Vacancy. ​In all these cases (and, sadly, many more), translators are forced to work too quickly and under too many limitations for, generally, too little money.

Now, all of these situations are horrible, and there is an understandable outcry over the armed guards outside the Italian bunker for the Brown novel, or the sub-minimum-wage pay for translating Rowling. But it is doing some good, one tiny sliver of a silver lining in a darkened, thundering sky. It sparks all of this bad press, which raises awareness and attention about the hundreds and thousands of other terrible contracts that get dumped on translators of every ilk.

So often, people (especially Americans -- we're more guilty than most about this) assume that translation is easy, quick, cheap, something any bilingual person can do. Would you pay your translator the same hourly rate that you pay your lawyer?​ Or your accountant? No?

Well, those who don't are committing the same sin as sticking translators in a bunker without any outside contact, the same sin as depriving translators of a several-hundred-page text until three weeks (THREE WEEKS!)​ before their deadline. Translators, whether literary or any other breed, are artists and masters who have honed their craft through hours and days and years of classes, practice, and research. So while these terrible news stories are still terrible, they do serve to bring some of our plight into the limelight. They serve to remind the reading public about how much work goes into translation, and how terrible it is to deprive translators of humane working conditions or a living wage.

But fortunately, it isn't all bad news. Good presses exist: Open Letter, Archipelago, White Pine. Translator and author Lydia Davis just won the Man Booker International fiction prize. Edith Grossman is still writing and fighting for us. All in all, we're doing pretty well, I figure.​

Asymptote Contest Announcement

This is exciting! Asymptote​ is one of the greats in literary translation, a journal of wonderfulness. And they've announced a contest for emerging translators here. Want more details? Here you go, straight from their Facebook page:

Would you like to be published alongside translations by Lawrence Venuti, Lydia Davis, and Susan Bernofsky? Would you like your work seen and judged by Eliot Weinberger and Howard Goldblatt? Most importantly, is there an untranslated or little-translated writer that you are desperately, maddeningly determined to bring to the attention of the English-speaking world?

Then submit to "Close Approximations," Asymptote's first ever translation contest! Thanks to your generous support of our IndieGogo campaign, we can make it worth your while: the winner of each category will receive 1,000 USD, as well as the opportunity to publish with Asymptote.

They've given a great lead time, too -- submissions aren't due until September 1. So, get thee writing!​

On a related note...Asymptote​'s announcement is also a wonderful example of how to act after a big fundraiser. Their successful Indiegogo campaign closed at the end of April. And not even one month later, they're already following through on their promises in a big, public way. Kudos, my friends.

In Praise of Youth

Yes, I'm technically part of this demographic, at least when it comes to professional spheres. But I'm not so much tooting my own horn here, as staring awestruck and my brilliant, whip-smart, talented, super-accomplished peers. Who also happen to be my colleagues.

There are the people who have doctoral degrees. The ones who know five languages and are working on their sixth and seventh. The ones who know everyone, the ones who have lived everywhere.​ All of these people are still in their twenties.

There's the girl who runs a well-known review and cultural institution, and is now starting her own publishing house.​

There's the girl who's already been published five times over, volunteers for two journals, and works for a publishing house on the side.​

There's the guy who is well-established in a literary agency in New York City, and still manages to get his own brilliant work published.​

People sometimes tell me how much I impress them. How wonderful my enthusiasm is. How doggedly I seem to work. How much they love my fresh ideas. I'll accept the compliments, of course, and I thank them profusely for expressing their opinions. But there are so many people I know who do so much more.​

But don't think that this is to get down on myself. On the contrary! I think it's fascinating and fantastic how much energy we can all infuse into the world. To overgeneralize a bit: if young people can create so many new and wonderful things to enrich the world, and if young people can use their natural vibrancy to inspire everyone else to do more interesting things with their lives, then everyone benefits, and the world is a better place for it.

Now, to remember this lesson when my own hair starts turning gray...​