Wine and Books

They go really well together.

Kidding. Well, not actually kidding at all. But that's not what this is about.

So, more specifically: book reviews and wine descriptions. They're starting to get scarily similar.

No, I haven't started reading about "hints of oak" or "overtones of caramel" in book reviews. But you know the thing about wine descriptions: there are a select few people in this world whose palates are trained enough to be able to pick out those notes of plum or dark chocolate without being prompted. For the rest of the world, there's just a simple difference between good wines and bad wines. And for the most part, it's all completely subjective. Your own tastes determine whether a wine is good or bad to you, whether you'll enjoy it or not. There are a few wines that pretty much everyone agrees are universally good, but even there, everyone may have a different reason for drinking it.

The more book reviews I read, the more I think that books are just the same as wine. There are lots of good books out there, and lots of not-so-good ones. But move beyond that almost-universal dichotomy, even ever so slightly, and it suddenly becomes a matter of personal taste. I think Perec and the Oulipo crowd are fascinating; other people can't get over the craziness. On the flip side, I really appreciate the widely-acclaimed Maidenhair, but I still haven't managed to finish it.

I read a book for a class last spring that I thought was . . . fine.* I thought the book had some pretty ambitious and admirable goals, but that it didn't really achieve many of them. But there are other reviews out there, other readers who think the book was amazing. They've used words like "vibrancy" and "liveliness" to describe the author's writing. They speak of an "authenticity" in the retelling that I didn't see. They describe the "impassioned" and "arresting" story, which are very present emotions that I didn't feel.

I know book reviews can be extremely subjective, but there's also a rather large element of authority that we ascribe to many book reviewers. It's the same kind of trust we place in sommeliers and winegrowers, the ones who know the terroir, who know the kind of volcanic soil in Sicily that give this particular wine its peat-moss quality, the lack of rain in the third week of August in 2003 that causes the elevated sweetness of that particular Riesling, the bourbon barrels that age one of California's Cab Sauvs in a specific way. They know things, so we trust them.

But if you can't taste the peach, does that mean you're a bad wine drinker? If you don't feel "arrested" by the story, does that make you a bad reader?

No. Of course not. The beauty of humankind's variety, all our wide-ranging tastes, and all that. Personal preference will always have some sort of effect on our judgment of subjective artistic endeavors, whether experienced over our palate or through our brain. As long as you can explain why something didn't mesh with your tastes--in an intelligent fashion, without making personal attacks--your opinion is just as valid as any reviewer's.

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*This has no bearing on the author, whom I met--I think this person is pretty fabulous and a great speaker. I'm also purposefully not giving enough information to identify either the work or the author, since this is not about my personal experience with the book, but rather just looking at the general subjectivity of literary enjoyment.

Ebola? No problem. Go to Madagascar.

You know those games where you're a supervirus? And you try to wipe out the human race? There's one for the computer called "Pandemic 2," and you can customize your symptoms, transmission, everything. It's fun.

But you only win if you actually kill every single last human. And there's usually one problem: Madagascar. It's an island, and they're smart there. If you don't start there, you'll never get in.

It makes for good party conversation.

As it turns out, however, life might be imitating art here, too.

At the end of August, there was a Russian cargo ship that was trying to dock in Tamatave (Toamasina), Madagascar's major port on the eastern coast of the island. Problem was, the ship had made a stop in Liberia just before that. Read: EBOLA SCARE. So the Malagasy officials didn't let them dock. The ship sat there, just off-shore, until the proper quarantine period had passed. So Madagascar might actually be the safest place in the world if a global pandemic breaks out, even in real life.

If you can get in.

How?

How can I tell the story of this place?

Its red soil that browns the skin better than any sunshine tan. The sky so large it circles the globe and comes back around to wave from behind, the same huge sky. The backyards and courtyards that do more than double-duty, as gardens and pet spaces and toilets and trash heaps and places to relax in the evening. The taxis that might be the most trustworthy means of transport, if you can pay the cost. The forever flickering lights, the water supply that may or may not be cut on any given day. The . . .

The list is too long.

How to tell the story of an entire country, an entire people, in one short story, when no stories yet exist in English? Or very few.*

How not to feel helpless, in the face of some who need everything, but most need little outside help? Just some mosquito nets for the tourists, really.

Just outside of this city is a paradise, as there is just outside any city, if you travel far enough. And here as anywhere, there are city children who have never seen the countryside, and country children who have never been to the city.

Here, as anywhere, the goal of education is to show our children just how great and wide and grand our world is, so that they can do anything they want, go anywhere they like, and treat all peoples of the world with respect. Even--especially--their own eventual children, biological or otherwise. But how is this any way to raise children? Without shoes even for church, without a school within walking distance, without any other source of heat but the hearth in the bedroom/kitchen?

How is this acceptable for us? How does the world feed such a vicious cycle? What are these people, whose only task is to survive? And what are we to them? We, who have the means to evolve beyond, to progress further? Us, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I? Everyone must be responsible for themselves, yes. But without a bit of care for everything and everyone else on this globe, how can we ever survive?

And yet, where do you draw the line between an excess of charity and keeping yourself afloat?

What to do in this strange and fascinating and fantastic country, where the flies buzz around your dinner in anticipation of you?

*Note: the "few" is this: Voices from Madagascar, a wonderful anthology with bilingual French/English text on facing pages. It's a good start, but it was published over a decade ago by a university press and is now, for all intents and purposes, out of print.

Let's talk about taxis-brousse and taxis-be

These things:

From the Canal blog

Well, that, except much more crowded. And without the little eyes on the front. And not a cartoon.

So, more like this:

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A trip to the countryside with a humanitarian organization in Antananarivo

Taxis-be (public transportation in the city; "be" means "big" in Malagasy) and taxis-brousse (long-distance regional or national travel) are gigantic vans, most that can fit upwards of 30 people if they squeeze in tightly enough (which they all do). Every single one is old, clanky, and practically falling apart. In Antananarivo, the drivers all obey the unwritten rules of the road, where there are no stoplights, few street signs, and a very confusing system of right of way. The "conductors" who take the fare tend to hang outside of the van's doors as it starts driving, closing the door from the inside halfway down the road. Oh, and the fare is . . . unknown? Known only to the locals? Definitely not written down anywhere. All in cash, too, so vazahas (foreigners) could easily just hand over some random bill and be taken advantage of. And in the above style of taxi-be, there's usually planks of wood that the driver passes back for people to sit down in the aisles when it gets crowded.

And it always gets crowded.

I'm very very very glad that I'm so short for an American. At nearly 5'3", I'm of average height for a Malagasy -- and I just barely fit in the seats. My knees tend to knock against the bare metal of the seatback in front of me, sometimes a bit painfully.

Basically, a taxi-be should be the most terrifying experience in the world. Nothing about it says "comfort" or "safety" or "the better way to travel," not by a long shot. It's loud and crowded and utterly unsafe.

And yet.

(There's always that "and yet.")

It's just how things are here. Everyone takes taxis-be, from poor to rich (unless they travel with bodyguards). The lack of personal space is normal, not uncomfortable. The drivers know exactly what they're doing, and how to thread their way in between alien-seeming traffic patterns. There's not enough space in Tana for anyone to drive fast enough for seatbelts to be necessary. Everyone pitches in to pass money back to the conductor, who will always give you the right change. They'll answer any questions you have, too (although mostly in Malagasy).

This is the culture, these are the norms, and just stop looking at things through your Western goggles now, won't you? It's hard, I know. It's hard for me, too. But not everything that's different from what we know needs fixing. Welcome to the other side of the world.

Manao ahoana!

That's how you greet someone in Malagasy. But, like many languages, they tend to smoosh some of their sounds together, and they drop the last vowel of every word like it's their job. So it's really pronounced more like "Manaoon!" Yes, with the exclamation point -- Malagasy is a very sung language.

In addition, as it turns out, Malagasy has more English influences than French. No one's sure of exactly why, but the British did definitely have an earlier presence on the island. Maybe that explains the fact that they pronounce their months almost exactly like us, even if the spelling is pretty different.

Also, the Malagasy alphabet only has twenty-two letters. They dropped the unnecessary ones, as they say:

• C can be replaced with either K or S
• U is out, because their O already makes the long "u" sound
• W can be replaced by their O, as well
• Q is just dumb

(That is, verbatim, what I was told about Q.)

MICROFORM!

As everyone can probably intuit from my lengthy silence, I'd been working on my thesis translation full-time for the last few months. It went well, but it put me into a little bit of a hermit-bubble. I guess I did get to go to my brother's graduation in NC in May, and I made time to go out swing dancing every so often . . . but on the other hand, at least twelve weeks' worth of PW, Weekend Reads, and publishers' updates went straight into my trash. And this blog didn't fare much better, either. Sorry about that.

But I come up from the murky depths of translation hermitage with a new story to share: as part of my research, I learned how to use a microform machine! It's been over a decade since I first saw one of those ancient machines sitting in the musty, dimly lit, extremely stereotypical newspaper reading room of my childhood library, and I hadn't had any valid research reason to try it out until now.

Guys. Gals. People. It's SO COOL.

I go nuts over organization. I also love things that work. Old, simple machines that are very good at what they do. Microfilm and microfiche should be completely obsolete forms of information storage by now, but they're not. Yes, the Internet and electronic databases are usurping many of the microform machine's uses (e.g. newspapers' archives are all held online now), but that doesn't mean that microfilm is dying. Oh no. Instead of just being an obsolete form of research, which some university libraries keep around only for that one tenured professor that won't leave, microfilm is actually acting as a hard-copy backup to many of the online journals we know and love! Useful AND fascinating!

Seriously. Fascinating. I mean, look at this thing:

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IT'S SO PRETTY!

And it plays this thing:

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Tiny, man.

AND this!

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(All images from Wikimedia Commons.)

I'll leave it to you to figure out which one is microfilm and which is microfiche. (Hint: fiche is French for something . . . )

I'm getting a little smitten, I think. It's actually gotten to the point where I'm trying to make up specific enough research questions that it would warrant a trip to the microform machine. It's fine, though. I can stop anytime I want. Really, officer.

Well, aren't you a tall drink of water in this lonely desert.

Why hello, dear readers. It's been a while. Life happened, of course.

But in the interim, I have written a thesis! Or, almost. Hello, 1 a.m., my faithful friend. You and I will be very close until deadline on the 31st.

Here's more news. You wanted that, right?

I'm going to Madagascar!

Yes, the island.

Yes, from the movie.

No, there will not be any penguins. There will be lemurs, though.

And I'm leaving a week from today. Well, technically from yesterday.

More to come soon when my brain resolidifies from the mush it has become. Until then, I'll leave you with this thought, from the exceptional documentary, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi":

Once you decide on your occupation . . . you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That's the secret of success . . . and is the key to being regarded honorably.

My friends. Dear readers. I love my work.

Babelcube: How About Them Apples?

Emma, this one's for you. I started responding to your comment on the last post, but it spiraled into much grander (and longer) territory.

I've heard quite a bit of chatter about Babelcube, a service that lets authors hire translators directly, over the past several months, so it's high time that I went to check it all out for myself. My findings are as follows.

Babelcube is like a worm-eaten apple: glistening, healthy skin on the outside, with one little hole that leads to a rotten core.

Problem #1: Authors pay nothing for the translation of their book. That's great for the authors, but pretty bad for the rest of the world, considering translation is a service that demands appropriate payment.

This means that there is no upfront payment for translators. In fact, no payment is guaranteed at all. The entire work is done on spec. I have a colleague who explained to me his opinion that spec work should always be done for works from classic, well-known authors. As he says, "At least one of you should have a recognizable name."

Problem #2: Translators don't even get to read the whole book before bidding for it. They just get a sample, on the basis of which they might get selected and sign a contract. That's slightly terrifying.

Problem #3: Payment is based on royalties. Now, on the surface, this is actually a fine idea: why not let translators be held somewhat accountable for the sales of their book, similar to the way authors are? Now, this only works, of course, if the translator gets paid a fair wage for their work in advance, but let's set that aside for the moment.

The division of royalties is actually pretty okay -- at least at the beginning. It starts at a lovely 55% for the translator for the first $2,000 of net sales revenue, but then drops pretty sharply from there. So total, for the first $8,000 of net sales, the translator gets $2,900 (Babelcube has this figure right on their revenue share page). And while that's a fine number, let's assume that the book was a pretty slim novel at 50,000 words. That's a whopping 5.8 cents per word. Ouch. And after that, it gets even harder for translators to earn any money -- only 10% of net sales after the first $8K.

I don't want to completely rag on Babelcube, because they are ostensibly doing the world a service by getting more literature out there in more languages. And honestly, this type of setup is extremely attractive for self-published authors. The author has to be the rights holder, which usually only happens for self-published works. (Tangential hilarity: there's a clause in the contract which states that the rights holder must affirm that "the Book is currently sold by Amazon." Hahahahahaha.) But if we are in the realm of self-publishing, then the book is probably going to be priced much lower than traditionally published books: $4.99, $1.99, or even 99 cents. How many copies would have to sell for translators to even dream of that first $2,900 in payment?

BUT! But but but. Here's the biggest Problem of them all: a lack of accountability, a lack of ability to really know what's going on with your work. Now, authors are rarely able to read their own book in translation. One Greek author recently marveled to me how she wasn't even able to recognize her own name on the cover of a Russian translation, which is a fair point (and also highly amusing). But there's usually a more-or-less official set of checks and balances built into the translation process. Specifically, for example, when an English book gets picked up for translation into German, there's a German publisher at the other end who engages the translator and edits the translation. They make sure that the work is polished and presentable in German, even though the original English author speaks not a lick of German. At Babelcube, though, the authors themselves are asked to sign off on the first ten pages of the translation, and then again to accept the final finished copy. How in all the nine hells are they supposed to do that with any sort of reliability? Babelcube actually suggests the following to authors: "if you don't speak the destination language, you may have a friend who can help." Gee, thanks.

And for translators, the guidelines for the authors to accept the translation are a bit murky, as well. Babelcube offers themselves as an arbitrator if necessary, but it would still be pretty easy for the author to give the translator the runaround. Even if the translation was forced to be accepted, the author could "decline" to promote the new translation at all. If no one can find it, no one can buy it, and the translator doesn't get paid. (Not to mention that the translator could screw the author over in a very similar way. The difference is that the author doesn't have any money or unpaid time at stake.) Besides, this is one of those awful "work-for-hire" situations. Sure, you're paid royalties on this one, but that doesn't outweigh the fact that you don't hold any rights to your own work. Sigh.

Realistically speaking, the risk is very high for everyone. I would say that it's too high. And granted, for the translator, this seems like one of those opportunities that gets you experience and exposure early on in your career, as well as that all-important line on your CV. For some people, this is exactly what they need. Heaven knows I had my own terrible experience at the beginning of my career. I regret the outcome (and the payment, egads), but I can't regret the experience it gave me, and what it taught me NOT to do.

All I'm saying is that Babelcube looks like a very easy way to get a translated book under your belt, which could be really great. Just don't spend all of your time there.

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Emma, I'd be extremely interested to hear what you think, as someone who's working with Babelcube. Are you happy with how you're getting paid? Did you have a good experience with your author? Any logistical snafus with the site itself?

If you found this post helpful, you can buy me a tea (although it might say “coffee”).

Higher-Higher Education

I get it. I really do. I'm approaching the end of my MA program. Classes end in 4 weeks, my thesis translation will be done over the summer, then a quick administrative break before I (fingers crossed!) get my degree in the fall. So of course the next logical step is for people to start asking me about going for a PhD.

Or is it?

Guys, that's a long degree. This MA program that I'm doing? Only a year long. One calendar year. Do you realize how different that is from a 5-7+ year doctoral program? One of the reasons I chose the University of Rochester's MALTS program was because of its brevity. Before applying to the program, I already knew that I wanted to work full-time as a freelance literary translator. After having completed almost two years of pretty much that exact thing, I could have quite easily continued along that career path without going back for an advanced degree. But I wanted the training, I wanted the feedback, I wanted the new experiences, and I wanted the contacts, all without taking a huge gaping break in the professional progress I'd been making.

And you know what? All of those boxes, all those criteria for going back to school, they all got checked off. I made a very good decision. Now, I want to continue along with my plan, not stay in school for another eon. I have a grand master plan, people. Let me do it. (It's not evil, I swear.)

But I get why people are asking me about PhD programs. Literary translation is a very scholarly thing. (Come on, it's right there in the name: literary.) One next logical step would be a PhD in French Literature. And, weirdly enough, it's almost more practical. A guaranteed position for the next 5-7 years, tuition paid, stipend included, working time, and time to do your own work. Sure, you have to take on some extra duties, some things outside of merely translating, in order to do your job, to get your degree, to get tenure . . . But with so many people going to college these days, the MA has become the new BA, and the BA has become the new high school diploma. So the PhD is the new MA, right?

Still, not for me. I don't want to be an academic. I have the utmost respect for my professors, and some (well, most, actually) of the greatest translators I know are professors first. But I want to prove that you can just be a literary translator, completely freelance. It's not a walk in the park: as poorly as some academics get paid, translators tend to get paid even less. And I'm certainly not supporting myself yet. But I'll get there.

And if I change my mind later on and get completely wooed by the idea of a doctorate, I can always go back to school. But for now, I'm staying in Rochester, heading up ELTNA, translating, and doing all the other fun projects that come my way.

Devil's Advocate

Here's a not-so-popular idea: translators should have the visibility of editors, not authors.

There was a whole uproar on a literary translators forum a while back about an article in the NYTimes, where David Gordon, an mid-range American author wrote about his strange and unexpected success in Japan. Translators were getting their panties all in a twist because said author never once mentioned his translator, who was probably single-handedly responsible for said Japanese success. Some even took him to task on his own blog for it, where he responded quite gracefully:

My translator's name is Aoki Chizuru and I certainly have thanked her, in person, in print and in public, in English and in Japanese, and have also expressed gratitude when receiving the awards for those who even made it possible for me to read the books I loved from Japan and elsewhere. She translated my second book as well and is working on the third. So don't worry!

Either way, it sparked a couple of comments from translators lamenting about the fact that authors and reviewers not only didn't mention their translators in print, but editors were also left out.

Editors are pretty much universally left out. As are publishing houses. And agents. And publicists. And foreign rights directors. All the damn time.

Far from being something to moan and whine about, this is instead just the normal course of business. There are always the players in the limelight, and the dozens of other people behind each one of them that makes everything happen. And it's not just in the book industry, either. How many producers do you know in the music industry, besides Brian Eno and Timbaland? How often are screenwriters publicly thanked and acknowledged for their work, besides the credits at the end of a movie and the Academy Awards (and even then, those awards might not be shown in the main broadcast)? How many times have you wandered through an old European city without knowing the names of any of the artists who sculpted the half-naked marble beauties in the park?

I'm not arguing that translators do unimportant work. Far from it. Translation is some of the most important artistic work out there, if such things can even be ranked on some sort of scale. But how do you compare a translator's importance and artistic merit with the original author? Or with an editor's influence?

And what if, as was mentioned in one of my classes recently, a book reviewer is working with an extremely limited word count -- 500 words, maybe even 300, a mere blurb. Feel free to take such reviewers to task if the translator's name is not mentioned in the metadata listing of the book, but if the translator gets glossed over in such a bite-sized review, it's not such a crime, really.

Related to that, there was a time when PEN's Translation Committee sent strongly-worded letters condemning a reviewer if they neglected to mention the translator in their review. Far from bringing about the expected change, many reviewers bristled quite a bit at such an attack. Their reasoning was that at least they were reviewing any translations in the first place. Which is a fair point.

There's a time and a place to thank everyone involved in a bringing a book to life, and hopefully, everyone all gets their proper due. But normally, the spotlight is fixed entirely on the author and his or her words, no matter how much revising or rewriting or writing their editor actually did throughout the whole process. Why should translators be treated any differently?

Whew. End thought experiment. For now.

(Disclaimer: as you can probably figure out by the title, I'm playing devil's advocate here. I'm not at all convinced by my own argument, but it's an interesting idea.)

(Also, there are plenty of articles out there playing rebuttal to this. See Words Without Borders and Asymptote's blog to start.)