US PEN Translation Prize to Donald O. White

The PEN America Center announced the winners of its literary awards a couple of days ago. Scroll down, down, down to the PEN Translation Prize, which has been awarded to Donald O. White for Albert Vigoleis Thelen's Island of Second Sight.

I'm very pleased indeed. My friend Amanda DeMarco reviewed the novel for Three Percent earlier this year, so I know it must be outstanding. And White got an honorary mention for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize too. I've been feeling eternally guilty because the British publishers sent me a big fat review copy a couple of years ago (the book came out in the UK in 2011). At which I baulked slightly - a 450,000-word novel about bohemian adventures in 1930s Mallorca! - and passed it on to someone else to read, who presumably baulked as well and passed it on to... and so on. Which is why there's no love german books review.

And that's been somewhat of a pattern, I suspect. The story of how the English translation came to be published is an inspiring one. The Cambridge-based translator Isabelle Weiss rediscovered the novel, which was first published in the Netherlands in 1953; too anti-fascist for German publishers even then. And she found out that the American Germanist Donald O. White (don't you love the name overlap?) had been working on a translation for twenty-odd years. A labour of love, I believe we call this. So they spent a year or so approaching major UK publishers with the manuscript, all of whom said no. It was too long and too obscure. In the end, a friend - Robert Hyde - who'd been in on it all from the beginning, decided to revive his old publishing house and bring the translation out himself.

It helped that Thomas Mann and Paul Celan had praised the book in the 1950s. The novel got favourable reviews in serious publications and was then picked up by Overlook Press in the US. Where they certainly know how to honour translators, if not in monetary terms then at least in terms of high-profile awards. White receives $3500 from PEN and the knowledge that a lot of people appreciate his hard work and excellent translation. 

I think this is a great success story, one to remind us that it is OK to publish long, obscure books in translation. Specially for Donald, Isabelle and Robert - and by way of apology - here's the world's biggest band playing their tune in suitably ecstatic manner.

Naomi Aldermann Talks Translation

British writer Naomi Aldermann hosted a fascinating show on Radio 4 yesterday, which you can listen to online. She spoke to three translators and four British writers about their experiences with being translators and being translated: Frank Wynne, Adriana Hunter and Daniel Hahn, plus AS Byatt, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith and David Baddiel. And she even had a go at translating for herself.

The writers made me very scared. Baddiel in particular seems to have an entrenched distrust of translation, based on the misunderstanding that his message - what the novelist wants to say - is ever going to get across untainted to the reader. I was frankly insulted by some of his comments. But even someone as clever as AS Byatt, who talks about her great relationship with her German translator Melanie Walz, says she prefers not to read translations. Ali Smith, however, is sparkling and intelligent and refers to translation as an ecstatic process. I'm glad the producer gave her the last word.

What the programme does quite cleverly is to juxtapose these writers - who don't know much about the nuts and bolts of how translation gets done, of course - with actual working translators. They all join in on a translation slam with Aldermann, who makes a few choices we wouldn't necessarily make, being a novelist rather than a translator. And they talk about how they work, defending the profession to some extent. They're still not named on the BBC website though. 

I suppose there are a couple of lessons in the show, for me: Firstly, that we still have some way to go, if even novelists take the view that translations are second-class versions, filtered reading that ought to be undertaken with the original at hand to check up on the translator's mistakes. There is some talk of the impossibility of translation, the fact that languages don't correspond one to one, and that English with its rich vocabulary is difficult to render into other languages. But they don't pick up on the idea that this might make English translations a richer experience than some originals, at least in theory. Nor do they think about whether writing itself is "possible" - whether emotions, sights, sounds, smells can be adequately translated into words. Most of the writers seem trapped within the notion that translators work on a word-by-word basis, "swapping in English words for foreign ones" - which made me rather sad. Little talk of tone, rhythm, voice, cadence, or any of those things we put so much effort into capturing.

And the second lesson is about translation metaphors. Have I mentioned before that I abhor translation metaphors? That bloody ferryman, the actor interpreting the playwright's words, the ventriloquist, the cow chewing the writer's cud and passing it through her four stomachs to produce manure. Here, though, the translators talk about translators as musicians - Aldermann uses the rather unfortunate image of an amateur pianist but Hunter picks it up and runs with it, admirably. And I'm coming to believe than when we're talking to a wider audience and not among ourselves, perhaps the occasional comparison is useful. Seeing as we work on rhythm, voice and cadence, perhaps the musician will do the trick. 

Do listen, now that I've spoiled it all for you. Stick your fingers in your ears when David Baddiel talks but let your love for Ali Smith flow.