Anthea Bell on starting out in literary translation

It's perhaps a Parkbench first to do a post solely to direct readers to another blog, but never say never...

I often get questions from new literary translators about what starting out involves. From now on, I'll direct them to this:

Anthea Bell, one of the greats of literary translation, has done a guest blog post here. If you've ever considered translation as a career, read the post and know that her advice is coming from a pro whose work is admired the world over.

Frankfurt, new clients and, oh, That One.

With apologies for the previous untruths about daily blogging re: translation. I'm a bad person. No, truth be known, I'm a busy person, and not as much as a night owl as I would like to be.

Frankfurt was a blister-inducing trip, studded with regular espresso and bumping into old friends. Ten meetings in a day and a half was good going, though I was shamed by the former chair of the Society of Young Publishers, now part of the fantastic SelfMadeHero lot with their Manga Shakespeare. He informed me with bleary-eyed authority that really one must do the hotel bar circuit by night to add to your boozing and schmoozing Frankfurt cred. He's probably right. Next year...

Meanwhile back at the ranch, and as a direct result of Frankfurting, we have a new client for translation. We also gained two further clients today (that's three new clients in one day, about which I am quite pleased) : foreign-language reads for a major literary imprint, and fact-checking for a well-established guidebook series.

And tonight, of nights, I shall be consorting with That One, and tomorrow, taking my second half-day of annual leave since starting Parkbench in June. That's right, folks: I will be up all night with the Democrats Abroad at an undisclosed location in Dublin City Centre.

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.

PARKBENCH LAUNCHES TODAY!

Greetings from Dublin on this lovely Bloomsday!

Well, it's official: 

Parkbench Publishing Services has launched 

and is 100% ready for business.

The press release went into Book2Book today, the emails streamed out over the weekend, and I'm just going to sit back, relax and wait ... no, no, no. I am of course going to keep on slugging through email introductions and making the Parkbench name known as the place to go for foreign reads, literary translation and editorial freelancers.

Having put in rather a lot of work over the last week, I was extremely irritated to see that my dictionary.com word of the day today - of all days - was 'dilatory'.

Clearly, it was intended as a personal affront, and general bad ju-ju. I'm having none of it. I am certainly not dilatory in my efforts, and will be ploughing through my aforementioned copyedit while reviewing two books and finding work for all my twenty-plus freelancers. 

I'd better get cracking. 

Google Analytics: Fascinating Timewaster, no. 1

Like all freelancers, I have to spend a lot of time online for work: looking for work, securing work, talking about work. I have a website to think about, this blog, a Facebook presence, papers to read, that sort of thing. I’ve been quite strict with myself about keeping working hours for work, and being online is no different.

And then, my Web Dork introduced me to Google Analytics. (I'm not bothering to link to anything Google . . .)

He needs it to work wonders with my Google rating, and he’s doing an A+ job. Am I the last person on Earth to know about Google Analytics? Probably. But now, I’m mesmerised by it – and unlike the Web Dork, I don’t need this information at all. For example:

They don’t like me in Holts Summit, Missouri

– or rather, they’re looking for some other kind of Parkbench. I see a theme: in places where the weather can be warm and people like to be outside, like Sydney, Melbourne, and, well, Holts Summit, MO, I’m getting false hits: garden furniture.

But folks in London, Dublin, L.A., Edinburgh, Galway and, oddly, Halifax think that parkbenchps.com is worth a good ten or fifteen minutes, about which I’m very pleased.

Aside from the overall popularity of the site, date trends and the statistics it provides, Google Analytics provides new website owners a great sense of curiosity: ‘Who do I know in Barcelona, or Morristown, North Carolina?’ ‘Is that who I hope it is, having a look at the website from Edinburgh?’ ‘What publisher is based in Blackrock, County Cork?’

Hmmm. Back to work.

And so it begins . . .

I am happy to report that I just accepted the first job for Parkbench, a week ahead of our 16 June launch date!

A middle-of-the-road non-fiction copy-edit is what I'll be cutting my freelancing teeth on, on-screen, thank you, and I can't wait. More to the point, work begets work, so I should be able to pass things along to the rest of the Parkbench freelancers in due time.

Nice as well to be starting out with a good, independent Irish publisher on a title that is, in one sense, within my realm of expertise. As the Good Editor said on the phone, tongue in cheek to be sure, 'may this be the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership'! May it, indeed.

*phew*

Dublin Writers Festival

While wading through the red tape that is setting up a new business, I'm very much looking forward to a break in the form of the Dublin Writers Festival. I'll aim for Lloyd Jones in a panel with John Boyne, headed up by Claire Kilroy, but I'm stuck on the Friday between the IMPAC Winner (tba - but here's the shortlist) and Tom Stoppard, who's a bit of an idol of mine and equally, clearly, of the guy running the Festival blog. If I thought that McGuinness was going to discuss the Ibsens he's put to bed after so many years, I might run back up to Dublin for that one - we shall see!

Meanwhile, tomorrow will cover the Tax Man and requirements for being self-employed, the Companies Registration Office to relocate my place of business to our new home address, and the good, old-fashioned bank, comparing deals for business banking. No one ever said it was going to be glamourous!

The great news, however, is that we're now up to nearly twenty editors, proofreaders, literary translators and foreign readers on the books and ready for work at Parkbench!

First Freelance Days

Greetings, all. Just a note to say 'hello', and that Parkbench has the movers in. I'm heading over to Dublin to set up shop, as it's from Dublin that I'll be running the agency. On the assumption that we're all new here, please check out the profile and website links alongside here to learn more about what we do.

This blog will be a space for news, discussions of translation and freelancing in the media and in the blogosphere and general chat. Although I'll be Irish-based, the freelancers on my books will be everywhere, so I'll try to keep the focus as international as possible. There will be some interesting times ahead, and some not-so-interesting times as Parkbench learns to wrestle with bureaucracy and scope out work for its huddled masses of editorial folk and translators.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, as you can well imagine. A freelance editor friend of mine warned me to expect to be balancing my laptop on one knee atop a pile of suitcases, and she wasn't wrong. There was a landslide of work, handovers, last goodbye drinks, work dos and Parkbenching it behind the scenes, but so far, so good - not that I'd want to tempt Fate.

Equally important was my own 'handover' from life in-house in publishing to life out-of-house. I was lucky to have made a good few contacts in London publishing while I was here, so I had to touch base with all of those. Keeping up with even incidental acquaintances is key, even though it's time consuming; I've set up contact lists of people and noted when I should likely get in touch. My existing contacts will be, directly or otherwise, the ones who give Parkbench its first jobs, so this has to go smoothly. It's easy to have these first connections seem casual or haphazard, to approach close former colleagues 'on the offchance that . . . ' but it really pays to be completely professional from the get-go.

What's slightly harder is building up contacts in a new area; though I have a language degree and have made a point to keep up with international types in publishing, it's daunting to enter a new direction in your career. I was pleased to have been invited to the Translators Association 50th anniversary celebration away on down in Chelsea - and very worth a visit it was, too. Expecting to have a glass of wine, mingle a bit, swap some cards and hit the road, I was thrilled by the warm welcome Parkbench received from some of the great and the good of the translation world. As a newbie, and a newbie hoping to shake things up a bit at that, I wasn't quite sure how my plans would be received; would lifelong freelance translators balk at the idea of agency work? Would they question the idea of handing responsibility for reader's reports and sample translations back to the foreign publishers and agents?

The reality was much simpler; not only did they 'get it', they loved it. From one quick chat with a multinational French translator, I was busily propelled around the room, handing out cards and explaining the set-up again and again. The group was older than I expected, but even the most experienced were keen to get involved, and before I left, I had half a dozen experienced, and in some cases, prize-winning translators on the books. Obviously, the proof is in the client list, but it's great to be able to go forth and conquer with the backup of a stellar stable of freelancers. Now to pony up for the membership fees!

Membership of the Translators Association, from what I know so far, gives you an 'in' to a supportive group of colleagues and all the typical lecture series and training that such professional bodies offer. Most importantly, it provides a killer contract-vetting service for members, ensuring that all TAers get the best possible deals for their work. There are, of course, plenty of such organisations to choose from depending on where you're based - I'll certainly be checking out the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association, too, so any top tips gratefully received as I consider my options.