I translate books for a living. AMA + recommendations thread

[FuckRealityBringMeABook]

Hi everyone, it is the feast day of Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translation and International Translation Day. I translate books for a living. Anyone want to ask any questions or recommend a translated book they have read?

Yes that definitely happens. Paul Auster is huge in France, for instance. Or someone like Terry Pratchett really needs an outstanding translator and ideally a long-term relationship to build a strong comedic voice in the new language.

Has Google Translate killed any of your work? Do you use it (or similar)?

I used to work freelance in a niche part of the software industry. About 4 to 6
times a year, I used to do translations and most of theatrical dried up due to Google Translate. The last job I did, was simultaneously translating and editing a book about the niche software I refer to. I used Google Translate to do the first pass and then Took it from there. (I have an MFL degree and used to live in the country of the language I was translating from).

@dizzydizzydizzy as discussed above, not really. Literary translation is a small niche that is pretty AI-resistant. Put it this way: the way AI works is to generate the most statistically likely next word. In other words, it is autocomplete on a giant scale. But the whole point of creative writing is to use language in fresh, unpredictable, unexpected, exciting new ways.

As discussed above, I would not trust AI translation as far as I could throw it in any field where the output mattered. It is too often wrong to be reliable at all. It might not matter if you are just using it to send your great-aunt Silke a birthday message but if you get it wrong in medical translation or whatever, you can kill someone.

Thanks! (And sorry I obviously missed your earlier post - didn’t mean to make you repeat yourselfI can fully appreciate what you’re saying about literature. I used to find in my particular field, the early days of Google Translate, it would spit out absolute gobbledegook. Over the years, it dramatically improved and was actually very useful. Also, for what I was doing, I generally had quite a lot of license to diverge from the original text. The main thing was always, I had to convey the same facts but I usually was allowed to tweak it/edit it quite a lot. I’m sure you don’t have that leeway. Anyway, thanks for your thread.

I love those books. I read a lot of Scandi Noir but I think that the Icelandic ones are my favourite and I love the Hulda series by Ragnar Jonasson and Eva Björg Ægisdóttir's books. The translations are great.

I have also read the first book in the Kari Voss series by Thomas Enger (Norwegian) and Johana Gustawsson (French) and was interested to learn that they write these books in English.

There is an old Irish poem called Pangúr Bán. It's written by a monk transcribing a book, watching his cat playing and comparing their work. There are a number of translations, and it's really interesting to see the different techniques. Some literally translate the words and it's quite "dead". Another (can't remember who, I'll check) has translated it to rhyme in English and it's really clever. It's a sweet poem and 32 lines long (4x8) It's worth a look for anyone who has an interest in translation/literature
(Edit: I checked. I like the Seamus Heaney version.)

Thank you for answering, and for giving me the proper terms. Now I can say I prefer foreignisation!

Fascinating thread, I love reading fiction in translation, it's a window into another culture but also a reminder that however different we all appear our essential humanity is always the same.

I'd recommend Claudia Piñeiro, she's South America's biggest selling crime writer.

fwiw I just got my latest contract to sign. It explicitly says I cannot use AI in any form.

I love The Mirror Visitor Quartet by Christelle Dabos translated from the French they are very well done and the translator has maintained idioms so well. It’s a very good translation. It was still understandable but she hadn’t replaced it, I dislike it when they anglicise too much.
A fun bit of trivia along translation lines, for The Shining where he is typing all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, that pile of typescript was done in different languages with the appropriately similar idiom for the different language releases, they all sit in their individual piles in the archive!

I hope you can still do it. There was a news thingy on here - not UK - that it's all being taken over by AI now.

As above - my publisher is explicitly banning AI use for translators.

Have you/do you live outside the UK?

Do you use translation technology/software for literary translation or do you just have the text you’re translating on paper or on a screen and then just go paragraph by paragraph?

Do you technical translation as well or just literary?

Lived outside the UK for a while, now back. No software, I start with a blank page. I do some non-lit stuff as well, yes.

If I can be cheeky and ask another two questions -
Do you annotate the source text before you start writing? And how many revisions does it take on average before you're happy with the way a passage flows?

I've been trying to read books in translation a bit more recently.

My favourites have been

Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi
Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia
A Heart So White by Javier Marias

I'm looking for more recommendations!

I do wonder a lot how the book would be in the original language and I'm not a linguist at all.

@tobee , I also loved Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi.

Others that I have loved:
After Midnight by Irmgard Keun. Translated by Anthea Bell.
The Short End of the Sonnenallee by Thomas Brussig. Translated by Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson
Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov. Translated by James Riordan
Childhood, Youth, Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen. Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
Kirstin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. Translated by Tiina Nunnally
Esther's Notebooks 1. Tales from my ten-year-old life by Riad Sattouf. Translated by Sam Taylor
Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro. Translated by Frances Riddle
Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov. Translated by Boris Dralyuk
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein
Bright by Duanwad Pimwana.Translated by Mui Poopoksakul
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi. Translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg
The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani Translated by Sam Taylor
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky. Translated by Tim Mohr

How long does it take you to translate a book? Say if you were to translate the first first Thursday Murder Club book , how long would that take and would you get any royalties

I just wondered ( considering the subject of the thread) whether you meant ‘muster’ or actually ‘fester’?

Second the novels by Irmgard Keun, translated by Andrea Bell. Funny but contemporary with (and about) Nazism. Surprisingly little known.

Sorry that should be Anthea Bell (translator of Irmgard Keun's novels).

I've written this novella, I'm quite proud of it:

https://amzn.eu/d/5LcNiUG

Do you think that it's worth getting it translated into Japanese?

I wonder even roughly how much it would cost.

😖😬 I meant moulder and get musty. Good thing i proofread my books more than my MN posts!

@RejoiceandSing Annotate, as in write notes in the margins and highlight stuff etc? Not really, though I am sure some people do. I tend to take my time over the first version and then do minimal edits but I know lots of colleagues who prefer to work the other way round, who bang out a rough edit and then fine tune it in several goes. Horses for courses.

:-) I finished reading Tristano Dies by Antonio Tabucchi just yesterday, as it happens. So powerful.