How much of your choices when translating are intuitive? And how do you feel about translations that are honed by intellectualism?

I think most of my choices when I translate are intuitive, and that’s the way I like it. I’m not sure what is meant by translations “honed by intellectualism.” I am, of course, aware of the controversy about “academic [styles of] translation” but I think the whole controversy is a waste of time. Academics (and they are the ones stigmatised here) are as able to do a good translation as anyone else, and non-academics, as likely to do a bad one. I think you can see what I’m getting at: the key question is how to do a good translation. That’s quite another question, and it’s the only one that matters. Actually the more I translate, the most I question, indeed worry about how, and how well, I do it. I have said I translate intuitively, but I also find translation theories enriching and I think every translators should have a rough idea of what translation studies say about the act of translation. It’s just that I like to keep the theories lurking at the back of my mind, while the front of my mind does the actual work.

Nicky Harman
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Some of the ideas I find most useful are about the translator’s responsibility and loyalties, and the need to honour the communicative intention of the original author.^[2] So if the author intended to be funny, then my translation had better be funny (or moving or ironic etc etc). This idea skirts around the issue of how closely (or not) to stick to the original text, though I do fret about the latter as well. There is an English proverb “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”; to turn it on its head, I feel strongly that I should never make a “sow’s ear” out of the “silk purse” of the text that has been given me to translate.

How do you translate silence?

I’m not sure I’m comfortable about the term “silence” in this context, although I like what Chase Twichell says about the idea in Cerise Press “… poetry can seem to inhabit the spaces between words, how its resonance and meaning sometimes come through almost in spite of words….” I think the same applies to any good prose. But I’d prefer to describe this quality as multiple layers of meaning. Surely words on the page which fire the imagination do so because they contain associations of meaning, resonances and evoke emotional reactions, whether through what they suggest to the reader or their rhythm and music. How to translate such complexity? There is no magic formula. One can only keep trying to probe behind the words of the source text, and to find a target equivalent which contains corresponding layers of meaning which satisfy the translator.

Which quality (in no way to be seen as the polar opposite of the other) appeals more to you when it comes to remapping of sensitivities, musicalities and imagination: enigma or precision? Why?

…the key question is how to do a good translation. That’s quite another question, and it’s the only one that matters.

I think one should not lose sight of the enigmatic in the original writing because that is what can stir the reader. So, the enigmatic in the source language has to have an equivalent in the target language. On the other hand, the translator has to put themselves in the shoes of the target language reader as well. It’s necessary to be precise in translating so that the reader of the translator has a clear picture of what is going on. Enigma should not mean confusion. Perhaps I can put it like this: the writer has a picture in their mind of a place, an emotion, an interaction between people, an event… As a translator, I need to be sure I understand what is in the writer’s mind, so I don’t introduce confusion which was not there in the original to the reader’s mind. (So that may mean I have to do some background research. What context did that event happen in, for example?) However, when I come to transfer that picture to the translation, I need to convey the style and feeling of the original as well as that mental/physical picture. Any imaginative text is bound to contain the enigmatic… and that has to be reproduced in the English.

Do you consider translating a form of self-expression?

Yes, translation is very much a form of self-expression for me. Funnily enough, I’ve never wanted to be an author, only a translator, although I do know translators who are also authors in their own right. Maureen Freely, who translates Orhan Pamuk, for example. I’m a firm believer that, as a translator, I need to know how to write very well in my native language. A translator-author has an advantage over me there, but I keep working on extending/improving how I express myself, so that I can put that at the service of the author I’m translating.