About Translation
In an exclusive article for Bookhugger, Jane Aitken, co-founder of Gallic Books, discusses the art and business of translation, and what they look for in a translator.
And there’s a little competition to round things off too…
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There has been a good deal written about translation recently and I highly recommend two pieces written by translators. They are The art of literary translation by Anthea Bell at Essential Writers.com, and Beth Fowler on winning the Harvill Secker Translation award. There is also an interesting interview with Frank Wynne, translator of, amongst others, Michel Houellebecq and Yasmina Khadra, over at WinstonsDad’s blog.
At Gallic Books we use a group of freelance translators, notably Alison Anderson, a novelist in her own right, (The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery, Monsieur Montespan, Jean Teulé) and Howard Curtis (The Nicolas Le Floch series, Jean-François Parot). They both bring a wealth of experience to the translation task, and all the books they translate for us pose numerous challenges. Parot’s books are set in the eighteenth century and Monsieur Montespan in the seventeenth, so both Alison and Howard have to bridge not just the language and cultural gap but also the gap in time.
We also do some of our translation in-house. Isabel Reid has to date been our main in-house translator. The first book we published was Murder on the Eiffel Tower, by Claude Izner and for a variety of reasons, it fell to Pilar and me to translate it. We had the time to do it in the period running up to our launch, and it was invaluable to us in understanding exactly what we were expecting our freelance translators to do for us. It was also how we established our own house style. As our company was originally called Aitken Webb, (Managing Director Jane Aitken, Editorial Director Pilar Webb) and we felt we couldn’t publish our first book ‘translated by Jane Aitken and Pilar Webb’ so we came up with the pseudonym Isabel Reid. Pilar’s third name is Isabel and my third name Reid. We translated alternate chapters, then Pilar edited it into one cohesive whole and then it went off for its round of copy-editing and proof-reading. We always try to use a combination of non-French speakers and French-speakers in the editorial process, so, for example, the copy editor of Murder is not a French speaker, so was purely considering the English, but the proof-reader is a French-speaker and did put her finger on a few places where the translation was still not quite right. After Murder, Pilar was unable to translate for family reasons, so Isabel is mainly me, but I often refer to Pilar for advice. In fact our approach to translation is very collective and other members of the Gallic staff help in researching historical items. Translating Armand Cabasson’s Napoleonic series took a good deal of research.
So what are we looking for in a translator? Excellent French of course, but it is not necessary to be a fluent speaker. A detailed knowledge of the language layered up over many years, but definitely with English as a mother tongue. Completely bi-lingual translators sometimes struggle to separate their idioms, and the same problem arises where English-speaking translators have settled in France. Too many years of sprinkling their English with ‘mais bon’ and ‘de toute façon’ can override their natural inclination to reach for the correct idiom.
The best training for a translator is reading, in English, across a wide variety of genres, and again, over many years. And keeping up with current bestsellers and styles. This is more important than a translator’s knowledge of the French canon.
We now like to train up our own translators and we are keen on recent language graduates. All the good universities for languages run excellent year-abroad programmes, which are very good for sharpening up colloquial French, and tuning in to current linguistic French trends. We have recently taken on translators from the universities of Bath, Cambridge, Leeds, Oxford (St Anne’s, St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall colleges) and Stirling. Many translators are qualified by experience, and in that case we don’t go delving into their academic qualifications. Nevertheless translation is a professional skill and it is annoying for the editor to have to go through and weed out and retranslate missed idioms, false friends (exagérer, insister, réflechir, spring to mind) and other common errors. The French like to ‘wear’ their expressions, they feel pain in different parts of their body (back pain is described as pain in the kidneys), they use alliteration more freely than we do, and punctuation in different ways. A detailed study of the French language should help a translator guard against these common faults.
Where we take on a beginner translator we provide them with a mentor, who guides them through the process and is available all the way along to answer questions. Our mentor is Ros Schwartz, an award-winning literary translator, with some 60 translations to her name, who is currently Chair of English PEN’s Writers in Translation Programme.
Translation can be an isolating task, and for that reason, we like to have our translators working in other parts of the business as well. One of our translators works also on our marketing and social networking, and we are taking on another who will also form part of the editorial team. Typically this will involve working two days at home, and three days in the Gallic office.
Just to round off, a little competition for any budding translators. How would you work this grey/black pun? Set in 1890’s Paris, the first speaker is a bookseller called Victor Legris, the second an artist by the name of Laumier, who is Legris’s love-rival. They are discussing Laumier’s penchant for painting with black.
‘Et vous, Laumier, toujours voué au sombre cloisonné?’
‘Mon pauvre ami, en peinture vous êtes en retard de plusieurs trains. Savez-vous ce que prône Renoir aux petits malins qui balancent leurs tubes de gouache noir à la Seine ? « Le noir est une couleur très importante. Peut-être la plus importante. » Remarquez, avec un nom pareil ….’
‘C’est exactement mon opinion, d’où mon goût pour le côté obscure de la capitale.’
‘Faux. Vous, ce n’est pas le noir qui vous intéresse, c’est le …gris. Elle est fine, non ?’
Jane Aitken
Answers on a postcard (or email info@gallicbooks.com). Best answer wins a signed copy of The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.
Gallic Books, founded in 2006 by Jane Aitken and Pilar Webb, brings the best of contemporary French writing to an English-speaking public.
April 21st, 2011 at 8:48 pm
good prize