Have you ever noticed — or felt — that the end of your current work in progress gets much less revision than earlier chapters? I have. It’s something I’ve noticed with every literary translation I’ve done.

In the beginning, I’m supremely excited about the new project; I have energy galore and focus extraordinaire. After every paragraph translated, I revise the English. After every chapter translated, I revise the English. Before moving on to the next chapter, I revise the English in the previous chapter. And so on. You get the picture: I revise a lot.

Until, that is, I’m three quarters of the way through the book and getting tired. Deadlines are usually tight. I’m having to fit in other work since my 50% advance on the novel translation is gone and the second 50% is still a couple of months away. Day-to-day personal distractions slip in more often.

As a result, these later chapters get less attention than earlier ones. I revise the English after every few paragraphs. I don’t always revise one finished chapter right away before moving on to the next because I can hear the clock ticking… Time is running out.

When I’m all done, yes, I revise those slightly neglected chapters once or twice more than earlier chapters, but it still feels inequitable.

I’ve therefore often thought that my very final revision of the whole English might be better done if I went from the last chapter back to the first. I never actually tried it; until now, that is, on my current work in progress.

Here’s my rationale for revising the novel backwards:

* I have more energy when I start a full revision, so the end chapters will finally get their due.

* I’ve looked at these chapters, in order, what seems like a gazillion times so I’m no longer really seeing what’s on the page or screen, but what’s in my head. Shaking up the order might give me fresh eyes to see anything I might have missed.

* Psychologically, counting backwards might fill me with anticipation and glee, like a New Year’s Eve countdown, rather than looking at all that lies ahead while the deadline zips up to meet me.

What about you? Have you ever revised your work in progress from back to front? Did it work? Would you consider giving this crazy method a try? Why or why not?

Translating I Hate Hockey for Canada
A guest post by Peter McCambridge

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

The back cover of Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments describes his first novel as “funky, rude, unpretentious,” tracing the “short, funny, and furious career of a group of working-class Irish kids who form a band.” I wanted my translation of I Hate Hockey to be all these things (well, maybe not so funky), describing the “short, funny, and furious” lives of the working-class losers of small-town Quebec.

I’ll drop the parallels with The Commitments from here on in (the comparison only came to mind in the first place because of the punctuation). This is, after all, going to be an article on what it was like to translate I Hate Hockey for the Canadian market. And the first thing I would say is that, although the entire process was incredibly straightforward, I think I could write a whole book on it! But space is limited so I’ll focus on just two key points here.

Using em dashes to mark conversation is commonplace in French novels and not so common in English. But I knew it could be done—and to great effect—because I remembered it from Roddy Doyle. And I wanted the conversations of my characters to keep their spontaneity, the back-and-forth that I knew could be so effective in English.

And so I was able to get exchanges like this:

—You didn’t kill Moisan then?

Jonathan bursts out laughing.

—No! What made you think that?

—Your left winger told me.

—Kim told you that?

—Yup.

As you can see from the above, I also kept the present tense (again, common in French novels, not so common in English ones). I actually started my translation in the past tense, but once I hit Chapter 2 I went back and changed it all. The past tense seemed to imply that the story was over, that the narrator was looking back on everything that had just happened—and looking back tends to imply some sort of hindsight that he might have learned from the experience. This was at odds with the novel.

I Hate Hockey is solidly, unapologetically noir. Before coming to the genre, I understood noir to mean dark. In other words, bad things happen. In noir, bad things happen to bad people. When I was first promoting the book, I would describe it as a dark comedy. But this seemed to send too many readers (especially in English Canada) off in search of laughs. Score: A Hockey Musical it is not. So keeping the present tense is a good way of allowing the narrator to experience everything at the same time as the reader, deepening the irony as we look on while he puts two and two together and makes five.

Despite hockey being as familiar a theme as they come for Canadian readers, plenty of minor changes had to be made to tweak the vocabulary, the turns of phrase, the punctuation, even, for a new audience. And I couldn’t be happier with the result.

Peter McCambridge blogs on literary translation at literarytranslationqc.blogspot.com. For the record, he loves hockey. I Hate Hockey can be purchased from Amazon, Chapters, and direct from the publisher at Baraka Books. It is now available as an ebook.

Readers Ask
Every now and then I will present questions that readers of Intralingo have sent regarding different aspects of literary translation, along with my answers. I’m hoping you’ll weigh in with your thoughts in a comment as well! 

Dear Lisa,

So I’m brand new to literary translation, and I’m a bit confused about the whole foreign rights business. In your blog you talk about how the translator should acquire the rights as an initial step, but from what I have seen through researching the topic online, a lot of publishers will not sell rights to an individual, but only to another publisher. Also I would be concerned as to the cost of acquiring the rights without having secured a publishing deal first. Am I getting this right or am I missing something?

Catherine

~~~~~~

Catherine,

Let me answer your question as best I can. I’m so sorry if I seemed to steer you wrong in my post Get Published – Go the Traditional Route.

In all honesty, though, the foreign rights issue is a very complicated one that I have not had to deal with directly in my own career.

You are absolutely right that publishers rarely “sell” rights to individuals, but only to other publishers. I shouldn’t have said “acquire” at all, but rather “establish whether they are available.”

Marian Schwartz, the eminently talented translator from the Russian who was involved in helping to write the American Literary Translators Association Guides to Literary Translation had this clarification to make in a comment to that post of mine:

“The point of determining the availability of foreign rights is not to acquire them but to find out whether another translation is already in the works and, if not, to be able to inform the potential English-language publisher that they are indeed available. No foreign publisher in their right mind would give or sell foreign rights to a translator because the translator cannot publish the book; for that an English-language publisher is needed. I hope this makes the situation clearer. Best wishes, Marian.”

Thus, if you contact the source language publisher and find that the rights for your language have already been sold, it is likely that a translation is already in the works. You may, however, want to contact the publisher who bought them to see if they have someone lined up or perhaps would like you to do the translation.

If the rights have not been sold, then you are free to approach publishers with your sample translation and try to interest them in the foreign work.

By all means, do get and read the ALTA Guides as they are indispensable for information on foreign rights and everything to do with getting published as a literary translator.

Lisa

Over to you, dear readers! What’s your experience with foreign rights and literary translation? Care to share any advice?

And if you have a question about literary translation, get in touch and I’ll do my best to answer it!

Translating a novel is an all-consuming task — at least, it is for me. I delve into the work: I read it, feel it, hear it, dream it. And when I’m in that deep, it sometimes feels like reading other words at the same time can “infect” my writing voice.

But a literary translation can take months to complete. If I don’t read other works, my brain starts to stagnate, the creativity and inspiration dissipates. It’s truly a conundrum.

I remember listening to the audio book of the first Harry Potter when I was working on a book of non-fiction a few years ago. It might have been a combination of the narrator’s rich voice (Jim Dale) and J.K. Rowling‘s inventive writing, but I found myself constantly thinking, “Ooh! There’s a good word!” And it was. Just not necessarily for a Mayan shaman to say in The Book of Destiny: Unlocking the Secrets of the Ancient Mayans and the Prophecy of 2012. I had to stop listening.

Yet reading is an integral part of my life. It’s how I entertain myself, relax of an evening or spend a wintery Sunday afternoon. I adore books. Fiction. Non-fiction. It doesn’t matter. Staying away from the stacks on my shelves is torture for the several months it takes to translate a novel.

Every now and then, I must admit that reading a little while working on a long translation does help. I’ll suddenly come across just the word I was looking for, or notice a certain sentence structure that’s common to my work, too. This is when it feels like reading really helps my writing voice and I’m glad I dove into the guilty pleasure of a book. It’s when my admiration for another writer starts to bleed into my own work that I have to close the cover and focus only on my translation…

What about you? When you’re translating or writing a longer work, do you read a lot or a little? Works in the same genre or a different genre? Does it always help or sometimes hurt your writing?

Readers Ask
The following is a real question asked by a reader, along with my answer. I hope you’ll add your thoughts in a comment as well! 

Dear Ms. Carter,

I am a Dutch student in my last year of applied linguistics (English – Spanish – Portuguese) and this is the year I will have to write my thesis. I have a clear idea of what I want to do, but I am struggling to convince my teachers to let me do it and I am finding it quite hard to find the research I need to prove my point. While searching on the internet I found your website and given that you are an established literary translator I wanted to ask your advice. I hope you don’t mind.

My idea for the thesis is to take the Dutch translation of an old book, one of the classics. My mind is set on Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray because I am absolutely in love with it, but it can be any one of the classics if another translation is more suitable. The language used in the translation of old books is usually as old as the book itself. Given that language is constantly evolving, it is a logical consequence that of the younger generations, less and less people read them. In an age where everything has to be fast-paced, language needs to flow as well. I want to take the translation and adapt it to the modern language. The alterations will be minimal; sentence structure, choice of words, punctuation. But I think the results will be very positive.

What do you know about adaptations/transcreations in the field of translation? Do you share my point of view or do you think the classics should remain the way they are? If so, why?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and think about it. It would help me greatly to get a new perspective from a professional.

Anouk

~~~~~~

Anouk,

Thanks for getting in touch!

I think you can easily make a case for a new translation of an old classic. It happens all the time, in every language, and in fact those are almost the only types of literary translation you see reviewed in the mainstream media. A new work by a Bolivian author is rarely reviewed, but a new translation of Dostoyevsky or Quijote is sure to attract reviewers’ attention.

You are right that language changes and that for an older work to be accessible to younger generations may require a new translation. I personally believe that a variety of translations only enriches a book and its place in history.

Probably the most widely known and discussed recent instance of this is Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Iliad. His work was reviewed in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal this past fall precisely because he brought such an old work back into the spotlight with very modern language — and even quite severe editing of the original work.

I think every translation is, in fact, a form of adaptation or transcreation. As literary translators, we are all faithful to the original work to the extent possible, but we will all also come at the work with a different background and viewpoint. As you well know, literary translation is not a case of transposing a text word-for-word, but creating a new text in a new language.

Lisa

Over to you, readers! What do you think about new translations of old classics?

And… if you have a question about literary translation, get in touch and I’ll do my best to answer it!