Parkbench: older, wiser and back to blogging.

Well, well, well. The intentions were good, the plan to blog was there, nay, *cringe* articulated repeatedly in print, right here, visible on the web for all to see.

Suffice to say, it has been a busy year. Moving home to Ireland, becoming self-employed, establishing a company in an under appreciated area of a volatile industry and completing an intense, year-long M.Phil at the same time did a fine job of filling all the hours in every day.

Four essays, six portfolio entries and one, full, annotated translation later, the degree has come to an end, and with luck, the new year will bring word of a good mark. Meanwhile, it's been back to properly full-time Parkbench.

I got my second Frankfurt under my belt in October, and had the pleasure of meeting some truly dedicated US publishers of literature in translation, and a selection of right-minded rights folk from across the Continent. Interestingly, all of the rights people I spoke to expressed their frustration with the translations they were using to sell rights that year, which I thought very intriguing altogether. This common strand ran through discussions with tiny independents, literary strongholds and commercial publishers alike, regardless of original language or genre. Some sought help editing their sub-standard translations, others hoped for a future budget that might provide for retranslation, but few were happy with the translations they had in hand, but time pressures meant that they were all they had to offer at the Fair. Any thoughts on this phenomenon would be much appreciated – comment below!

I also got to meet up with some friends from SYP days, who in turn introduced me to International Young Publishers of the Year from recent years, which in turn put me in touch with a man who might just need Maltese translators – but more on that later. Just today, one of the SYP crowd pointed me in the direction of this wonderful teacup storm about the cover of one of my favourite books, Remainder by Tom McCarthy, the UK edition of which I reviewed a couple of years back.

Meanwhile, I'm back to the editorial work in a big way, and looking for translation projects for one and all among the Parkbench freelancers. From the English-language side, I have a HUGE recommendation for Irish freelancers looking to work on their finances this coming year: banking, taxes, pensions, household budgets. Don't yawn! Truly, no one was more surprised than me. Email me for details.

I'm tempted to cram all our news into this one post, but I'll leave it at that for now! More to follow – really.

OYEZ, OYEZ: Trinity Translation Conference coming up

The second Trinity College Dublin translation conference

'Translation, Right or Wrong'

will take place on

Friday 6th and Saturday 7th March 2009

The latest version of the programme is available here.

Keynote speakers are Josephine Balmer and Lawrence Venuti.

The website includes a booking form;
further information can be obtained by contacting cato@tcd.ie

New year, new courses, new post

So as you may have gathered, the final months of 2008 were toughies. Enjoyable, but six or very long weeks of work and college assignments made this Parkbench very glad to get to Christmas in one piece.

The unfortunate thing about November and December was that they saw few of my efforts spent on translation. Work was all editorial for me, but some of our other freelancers enjoyed foreign-language reader reports, particularly in Dutch, a sample translation from the Norwegian for Cappelen Damm, and a very exciting full translation project, the details of which are still to be ironed out... more anon.

College, too, saw little in the way of actual translation. That said, we had an excellent seminar in which we indulged in 'translating' from fellow students' literal translations and a great little experiment along the lines of Chinese Whispers: English > Russian > German > English > Italian, etc. Another of our core courses took the form of an excellent lecture series (something of a lucky dip as we never got a schedule, but hey) with 'visiting' lecturers from across Trinity's excellent language departments. I enjoyed all of them enormously, despite having but two of the languages of the literatures presented. In no particular order, we examined the issues presented by translations of Catullus, Goethe, Borges, and Irish, Italian and Romanian poets, among others.

Despite this, the bulk of our time was spent reading primary texts in English or in translation and wading through literary theory. Though literature courses are always worthwhile for the translator, many of us wished for a more translation-focused and less comparative-literature-focused approach; our course is turning out to be much more a combination of the two than I realised, which is a great loss, I think, in an M.Phil that is but one year long. I had to work to fit my essays into the field of translation, but in the end was happy with 'Translator as Trickster' on the translation of magical realist texts Il barone rampante by Italo Calvino, Le Roi des Aulnes by Michel Tournier and O Vendedor de Passados by José Eduardo Agualusa, and for our theory class, a take on George Steiner's process of translation and how it changes the author's relationship with his text, using examples from the lives and works of Beckett and Kundera.

This last essay set me up nicely for my new option, Censorship in Czechoslovakia and Ireland, 1920–80, which I'm rather looking forward to, particularly as I will be presenting on the unusual historical importance of Czech lit in translation. This term also sees us with guest translator Peter Sirr for a course the doings of which will be posted here on a blog. Am most impressed. Have a peek there and you can read as we read. 

And with that, off to class!

Creole Chameleon Wives

Folks! I have just made my way again to Book Trust's snazzy-looking website, where Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner Daniel Hahn is blogging his way through his newest Agualusa translation. The site, a sub-site on translation run by a very dedicated chap at Book Trust whom I had the pleasure of meeting some months before I packed up and quit London life, is a great resource of info on all things translation.

I first came across Hahn when I reviewed The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa for the TLS, which you can read a chunk of if you like. I was absolutely blown away, both by Agualusa's spellbinding writing, and by Hahn's translation, which was powerful and light-handed all at the same time. I've gone back to Hahn's translation of Creole and, soon, will go forwards with My Father's Wives. I saw Hahn speak in Hampstead Heath Waterstone's as part of a great translation series set up by a foreign lit fan on their staff who merits an honourary TA membership for his efforts. It was a rainy weeknight a while back, and a packed house. I was thoroughly taken aback by how young Hahn was, grumble... Also, do have a look at Agualusa's own site, of course (PT/ENG/GR/FR).

At any rate, please do follow along as he goes. Am going to come up with a way to work this into the MPhil. It's all about the Venn diagram of Parkbench and the MPhil these days, I'm afraid.

Dante is NOT LOST.

On Monday, I began my first week back at university. I'm back at my alma mater, doing, predictably, an MPhil in Literary Translation. I believe, though I could be wrong, that it's the only such MPhil in the world.

It's odd, going back to college. A week ago, I spoke to a pensions advisor and registered for university in the same morning. Going forward? Backward? Hard to tell.

When I got there, though, I felt right at home. I'm having classes in the very same rooms in which I did my undergraduate degree, which certainly helps, but really, I've come to remember why I got into this lark in the first place.

It's all thanks to Dante. When I sat back down in Room 4097, I had a flash of my first day of second year: Dante in the original, with one year of Italian language classes under our collective belt. The professor, an amazing woman and force to be reckoned with, beloved of Italianists the world over, read the first lines of the Divina Commedia.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

From OUT-OF-HOUSE

'And here, ladies and gentlemen, we will have to stop. Many of you will be reading the approved translation alongside your Italian. This is FINE, but in places, the translation, like all translations, lets us down.'

We were cowed. To begin with the greats so soon after beginning the language, to study under this professor, to be stopping already to question the legitimacy of a world-renowned translation. We were, we thought, completely out of our depth.

'Your translation will likely translate smarrita as 'lost'.                     This is wrong. When you're wrong, you're wrong, and                           THIS is WRONG.'

Just so that we're clear. Ahem. Dante, she went on to explain, was a true believer, and as such, he never lost The Way. He was human, and as we would learn, was more than aware of his own sins, so it is understandable that he would feel that he wandered, nay, strayed from the diritta via, but he was never lost. It was key that we understand this as we began to follow Dante through his journey.

*  *  *

Since the course began in earnest, we've been encouraged to keep a log; ideas and challenges met along the way (am trying to abandon the metaphor, really), themes we'd like to explore and the like. I propose, provided that it doesn't bore people to tears, to do that here. I figure that many of the experiences of a new translator will be common among a lot of Parkbenchers and others, so I'd really appreciate your feedback as I go along.

Something that grabbed me today was about dictionaries. Our lecturer commented on his difficulties in learning Arabic thanks in part to a lack of reliable dictionaries. This, of course, came from a francophile perspective. The French, of course, benefit from a mighty tradition in dictionaries. A glut of good dictionaries is a mixed blessing, he mentioned in an offhand sort of way, because it provides a seemingly endless supply of carefully attributed and explained near-synonyms.

This was something of a revelation. Of course I know about the French dictionary tradition and their importance in codifying and recording the development of the language, but I had never connected this to my constant use of my growing collection. Despite the fact that I have been studying French for the last seventeen years, I still find myself reaching for a dictionary more than I do for Italian,  nine years on.

Live and learn. And look it up.