Translators on translation

Translation students read a lot of secondary literature in Translation Studies but may not read much that is written by translators themselves. Translators' own discourse on translation sometimes gets short shrift from scholars, rather unfairly it has always seemed to me. So here are a few links to interviews, reflections and blogs by translators which I have found helpful and/or interesting:

Author-translators get lots of critical attention because their translations tend to be all assertive and sexy and to enter into a dialogue of equals with the source text. Try Kenneth Rexroth on poet-translators. I am very fond of Eliot Weinberger's article 'Anonymous Sources'. Kent Johnson opens a dialogue with Weinberger in the Notes on Notes on Translation. Lydia Davis talks about translating Proust in an audio interview here.

Professional translators can have interesting things to say about their work which are well worth close scrutiny by students of translation as well as by readers of translations. There's a very nice interview with Howard Goldblatt on translating Chinese literature. Or try Natasha Wimmer on translating Roberto Bolaño or Anne McLean, another highly prized translator of Latin-American and Spanish fiction. Anthea Bell, recently awarded an OBE for services to literature and literary translation, has been interviewed lots, including here. The best of these essays say a lot not just about what translators do, but why they do it.

Translation is a process, and an experience which can be difficult to track. The translator's mind is a bit like a black box. We tend (like Jeremy Munday in his talk at Imperial this week) to turn to texts for evidence of how translators approach a translation. But we can also Ask A Translator. Four inside glimpses of the process of translation that I find very compelling are:

Daniel Hahn's blog on translating Agualusa's Estação das Chuvas (Rainy Season); Jo Clifford on translating Calderón's La vida es sueño and other plays; Peter Bush on translating Juan Goytisolo; and my favourite, David Macey's 'Beginning the Translation', published in an issue of the journal SubStance and available online here. I have probably mentioned this essay before and will again - it's a brilliant reflection on translation from the inside. Enjoy.

It used just to be literary translators who had their voices heard (not very loud). The web has provided a space for other translators to talk too - I came across some nice interviews with translators from Chinese recently which I recommend to anyone worrying that their background is too 'unusual' to build a career as a translator...:)

That's more than enough for one day. I hope to come back with more links on this later, but meanwhile if anyone else has good links to translator interviews, blogs or essays, why not drop a line and post them in a comment?

Jeremy Munday lecture, London, 13 January

Jeremy Munday of the University of Leeds will be giving a seminar at Imperial College London which may be of interest to those of you based in the London area:

Date: Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Time: 5-6
Room: Huxley Building, Room 144

Dr Jeremy Munday, University of Leeds, UK
Investigating signals of the value-systems of the translator/interpreter

Translating and interpreting function as a sensitive channel through which new texts and ideas enter a target culture. Understanding how such ideas are processed, evaluated and mediated is therefore crucial for translation theory and for the practising translator/interpreter. This paper will report on an investigation of the ways in which meaning is dynamically negotiated linguistically and communicated between writer, translator/interpreter and reader. The focus is on identifying the linguistic signals that indicate a translator's/interpreter's evaluation of an argument in a text and on the subjective value systems that inevitably come into operation.

Online Q&A on careers in interpreting and translation

Dear all,

There was a very useful Q&A session on careers in interpreting and translation on the Guardian website before Christmas. Posts contain hints about freelancers' websites, EU institutions, interpreting qualifications, translation companies to which you can apply for placements/jobs and lots more goodies.

Carol

Financial translation workshop

Dear all,

The University of Portsmouth is pleased to announce a forthcoming introduction to the specialised field of financial translation, delivered by Xavier Gil of KPMG Spain:

Friday 29 January 2010
10.30am - 13.00pm

Room 3.24
Park Building
University of Portsmouth

This workshop will serve as an introduction to the principles and the professional issues around financial translation. It is aimed at students of translation and working translators who wish to know more about this important field in the international translation marketplace. *Please note that this workshop is non-language specific and translators working in all languages are welcome to attend.*

Xavier Gil is Head of the Spanish translation service for KPMG Spain, and External Director for the Masters in Financial Translation at the European University of Madrid. He has more than ten years’ experience in business and financial translation both in-house and as a freelancer. His areas of expertise include accounting, banking, finance, macroeconomics, stock exchange, marketing, anti-fraud technologies.

Students and staff of the University of Portsmouth may attend this event without charge. There is a small charge of £10 for external participants, who are asked to register in advance. For more information or to register as an external participant, please contact Dr Carol O’Sullivan on carol.osullivan at port.ac.uk.

translators needed by broadcaster: deadline 8 Jan 10

Dear all,

This just came round on the BCLT mailing list and may be of interest to some of you. Note that the deadline is tomorrow!
Carol

Translators needed for project with UK broadcaster

A UK broadcaster is looking for three translators to work from 24 to 28 Feb 2010 on a fun (and paid) project translating written material posted online into English.
They need three translators each with very particular skill-sets: able to translate both French and Italian into English; able to translate both German and Dutch into English; able to translate both Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian into English. There will be some online idiom to translate. Peter Law - who is co-ordinating the project - would be happy to hear from young translators or recent graduates with the right skills, as well as more experienced translators. The work is based in London, from 24 - 28 Feb, full-time, with a half day start-up meeting at some point beforehand. If you have one of the skills sets taking part please send a CV and covering email detailing your language skill, grasp of web idiom (and/or willingness to learn), relevant experience and your day rate, to Peter Law at peter.law@somethinelse.com by 8 Jan 2010.

New Year

Dear all,

A very happy new year to you all. I thought this might be of interest for those of you who may be looking for an outlet to bring a non-English-language writer to a wider audience:

Call for submissions: Massachusetts Review
University of Massachusetts Amherst

In our fifty-first year of publication, the editors of The Massachusetts Review (www.massreview.org) plan to dramatically increase the amount of fiction, poetry and socially-engaged nonfiction which they publish in translation. MR is a general-audience journal of literature, arts and public affairs, with a particularly strong history of civil rights and feminist publication. Today we see a great need for US literary journals to internationalize – to open their ears, and their pages, to voices from outside the United States, and to writers in languages other than English. MR believes we have a real opportunity for synergy with friends and colleagues from local institutions, given the strength of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst programs in translation, of the locally-based translation studies journal Metamorphoses, as well as of the American Studies Diploma Program at Smith College (a one-year graduate program exclusively for international students). But we will of course also need the help of colleagues and translators from across
the globe. To that end, we plan to announce in our upcoming issue the Jules Chametzky Prize for Literary Translation, to be awarded annually to the best poem and prose translations published within our pages. To put it as simply as possibly, our goal is to publish great writing from across the globe, from writers we haven’t yet heard of. The Voice of America has been broadcasting non-stop ever since the early days of the Cold War. MR believes that our country instead needs to sit down, take some time, and listen.

Edwin Gentzler, with Ellen Watson, has been named translation co-editor for the journal.

Please forward to interested parties. For questions please contact Jim Hicks, editor, Massachusetts Review, at jhicks@smith.edu.