Context N°22
Ros Schwartz: Lulu and I met through the Translators Association and have been friends for about ten years. We both have a strong interest in Francophone writers and have co-translated two books: The Star of Algiers by Aziz Chouaki (Graywolf, 2005/Serpent’s Tail, 2006) and The Belly of the Atlantic, by Fatou Diome (Serpent’s Tail, 2006).
Our first collaboration came about through circumstance: Lulu had suggested Chouaki’s L’Étoile d’Alger to Graywolf Press in the U.S., but by the time they decided to go ahead, she had other commitments. She very generously passed on my name and Graywolf offered the book to me to translate. I immediately fell in love with it but felt daunted by the task: the style and language presented some real challenges. I knew Lulu was sad to lose this project, so I suggested we work together: I’d do the first draft and then she’d come in at the editing stage. The timing suited both of us. We agreed to split the fee two-thirds/one-third.
The translation did indeed prove tough. Most of the time I felt as though I was wading through treacle with very heavy boots on. I worked quite fast on the first draft, leaving in different options when I was uncertain and highlighting problematic passages, of which there were many. By the end of the second draft, quite a few of these had resolved themselves, but I still had a lot of doubts and the translation hadn’t gelled. I wanted to fine-tune the translation until it was as good as it possibly could be before handing it over to Lulu. Here I must confess to a fantasy—each time I deliver a translation I have a secret hope that it’ll come back from the editor without a single correction, just a note saying “Brilliant.” Which of course can never happen, and if it did I’d panic—it could only mean the editor hadn’t read the translation closely enough! Somehow, having a colleague scrutinise my work made me feel even more vulnerable and even more determined to get it right.
Lulu went through the translation annotating the printout. We’d agreed that she’d jot down any thoughts and suggestions for me to incorporate as I saw fit, and then we’d meet as often as necessary to polish the final version. So much for my fantasy! The manuscript came back covered in pencilled comments. Lulu was much tougher than any editor. But she was always spot on, and I accepted about 99% of her suggestions. It was an exhilarating feeling. Her interventions showed that the book “inhabited” her as it did me. Chouaki is a writer for whom rhythm is tremendously important—he’s a jazz musician. Lulu’s input was mostly to do with getting the right heartbeat for the English text. She brought a whole new vocabulary and boldness to the translation and resolved some of the passages that had me stumped.
The last stage involved a number of caffeine-fuelled sessions sprawled on Lulu’s sofa or on mine, surrounded by dictionaries and thesauruses, going over the translation line by line, reading it aloud and pausing every time something bothered one of us.
Although we come from quite different backgrounds, we have a shared language sensibility. This is important if you are collaborating, because ultimately word choices are subjective. Lulu and I “hear” in the same way, both the author’s voice and our own. When one of us said, “Stop, that doesn’t work,” the other would invariably agree. We’d brainstorm and would both immediately recognize the “right” solution when one of us lighted on it. I don’t think this is something that can be taken for granted. People have different artistic and musical sensibilities: some love Wagner’s music, others hate it. Collaborating on a translation requires a shared empathy for the source text and a similar feel for the “voice” and texture of the translation.
Another thing that’s important to mention is trust. There can be no ego, no ownership of the translation, no bartering, no “well I gave in over that bit so you should let me have my way here.” The only thing that matters is producing the best possible result. It was a relief and a pleasure to discover that Lulu and I have equally rigorous standards and are as exacting of ourselves as we are of each other.
By the time we’d finished, the translation no longer felt like “my” work, and I was able to distance myself from it and say “this is good.” Usually when I’m about to deliver a translation the demons start murmuring “it’s rubbish,” paragraphs unravel, and I honestly don’t know if any of it makes sense or not. Then there’s the post-partum angst and the excruciating wait for the editor’s verdict. For the first time ever, I had a feeling of exhilaration when we sent off the translation. Within forty-eight hours we had a rapturous email from the editor accompanied by only a handful of queries.
I vowed that I’d work with Lulu on every possible future project.
Not only was the translation much, much better than if I’d worked alone, but the entire process had been profoundly enjoyable and satisfying. Educational too. I learned a lot about my weaknesses.
The second book followed on the heels of the first. Pete Ayrton of Serpent’s Tail who published L’Étoile d’Alger in the U.K. offered us another very challenging project: Le Ventre de l’Atlantique by Fatou Diome, a Senegalese writer living in France.
This time, we split the book down the middle, each translating half. Then we each annotated the other’s work and came together to thrash out the final version. Again, for months I had the sense of being bogged down in the mud, but after Lulu and I had revised each other’s sections, it suddenly felt as if the translation had grown wings. It’s flown off to the publisher now and we’re busy developing our next project.
It has to be acknowledged that collaborating is also much more time-consuming and much less financially rewarding than working alone. We insist on long deadlines, which Graywolf and Serpent’s Tail agreed to, being among the few publishers who are prepared to put quality before speed. I decided some years ago that I would not be reliant on the income from literary translation for a living. My main earnings come from commercial translation, which frees me to choose the books I want to do and to work with the publishers I want to work with, on my terms. But the pluses of working with a trusted colleague are numerous. It is one way of combating the loneliness of the long-distance translator. Having someone to mull over the problems with, endorse bold decisions, and share the joys as well as the difficulties adds a whole new dimension to the translation experience. It is also a form of professional development. Translators toil away alone for years. How do we know if we’re any good, getting better, growing stale? Where can we learn new tricks and techniques? In a collaboration, the other translator holds up a mirror. I feel I’ve learned a lot about my own linguistic idiosyncrasies, my weaknesses and my strengths.
***
Lulu Norman: In my first week at university, many moons ago, I was presented with a particularly impenetrable piece of prose by Giraudoux to translate, the difficulty of which I’d never before encountered. I panicked: I knew (or could look up) the words, but I really couldn’t understand what they meant. Was this even French as I’d known it?
The panic washed up on my mother, whose French language and understanding was far ahead of mine, and we set to work on it together. I remember the feeling of a light being shone into a dark corner, of meaning opening up; I did recognize or could understand that turn of phrase, saw now what lay behind these words or linked that idea.
In Mahmoud Darwish’s words: “The translator is not a ferryman for the meaning of the words but the author of their web of new relations. And he is not the painter of the light part of the meaning, but the watcher of the shadow, and what it suggests.” This is as good a definition of a translator and their feel for language as I’ve come across; the meanings and associations that hover between the words are what you are translating in literature, especially in poetry.
You might expect a mother and daughter to share a sensibility for language (the first requirement for a successful collaboration), but in the years following, I’ve worked with friends on all kinds of translations, from Louise Labé to Serge Gainsbourg—though levels of collaboration have varied. All translators know the importance of “fresh eyes” on their translations, and I’ve often handed over my work to trusted colleagues to find it always benefited hugely from their input.
For what was to be my first book translation, I’d taken a book I’d fallen in love with (Cannibales by Mahi Binebine) to Granta, where the editor at the time was Will Hobson, who’s also a great translator. The sample I’d done in a rush wasn’t exactly dazzling, but Will not only insisted Granta let me do it (they wanted to buy the book and give it to someone they knew, someone tried and tested), and protected the translation process throughout, but he also waded right into the translation, literally raising my game in front of my eyes.
It’s difficult to describe the incredibly intimate feeling when your work, your best effort to date, comes back from your collaborator—you are touched, improved, and elated. I imagine it’s a little like being a relay runner who, having passed the baton and pulled up, exhausted and panting, watches their teammate sail past the finishing line—except in translation there’s no finish, only a deadline. I remarked early on to a friend who does a lot of musical collaboration, “It’s like someone seeing you with no clothes on.” To which he replied, darkly: “Oh, it’s a lot worse than that.”
I didn’t imagine I could perform the same service for anyone else, but when I came to work with Ros on L’Étoile d’Alger and occupied a similar position, I was amazed to find how much is dependent on your vantage point and at what stage you enter the fray; the second translator is able to see the wood for the trees.
I’d had a miserable experience with the book I’d just finished: its publisher, agent, and the writer’s wife had all intervened at different stages with massive disrespect towards me and the integrity of the translation process, in a way they’d never dare with the original author. I’d even had to barge into the publisher’s office, brandishing my contract, to ensure I corrected my own proofs. After that I was intending to give up translation and concentrate on writing or different work altogether.
But when I came across L’Étoile d’Alger, I felt very strongly about it, so it was with rather a heavy heart I passed it on. I was flattered when Ros suggested we do it together and saw it as an experiment. I suppose it was a bit of a risk as I had no idea if we’d hear the book in anything like the same way. Going through her version, I was a little anxious and very curious as to how she’d react to the level of my intervention, however benevolent. My aim was to produce a sensation parallel to my experience reading the French, so I just went in all guns blazing and hoped for the best.
With our second book together, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique, the idea of halving the book and acting as both first and second translators meant we had each hacked through the undergrowth and had a first-hand appreciation of the trees when it came to the wood. I had a (possibly romantic) notion that the writer’s voice might be skewed somehow by dividing the book this way and worried about evenness of tone. But by then our confidence and trust in each other had grown and our roles became both more blurred and more unified as we went over and over it, back and forth, so I didn’t really know who did what. Nor did it matter.
We all have our blind spots; everyone is constrained by their personal idiolect, by the limits of their vocabulary, by their habits, taste, or prejudice—by their experience tout court. This is not necessarily challenged much in the course of a translation, when you work alone (unless you have a very active editor—which seems less and less likely these days, if you have one at all), nor do you often have to account for it. It’s simply the way you are, part of your working method and what you make use of in the translation; you take it for granted.
And it’s precisely what you take for granted that’s opened up in a good collaborative process (resulting, too, in a gentle probing of your own method), and the effect is to make the book at least three times better than it would have been. When you have to externalize your thought processes, articulate and justify them, you can’t help but make the work clearer. Ros and I are complementary in ways I couldn’t have anticipated, and our differences make the work stronger.
The other important factor is time, which tends to be in short supply. We’re all familiar with l’esprit d’escalier, with second thoughts, and the involuntary nature of memory. You need, too, a period of time to turn away from the text and let your eyes become accustomed to another light before returning. In theory at least, with two translators, that interim period isn’t necessary, because the work comes back altered by the other’s gaze as well as their pen.
It’s unlikely, after all, that you’ll both fall down at the same time or in the same place; things that seem impossible to you may be no problem to your other half. The lost feelings that can occur during a long translation are much diminished, the heavy weight of responsibility halved. There will be fewer things overlooked or which you may not have fully understood but somehow hope will pass muster, and there’s less danger of falling into some kind of private language. You also have two times the experience to bring to bear, which must enrich the work in ways you can’t measure.
Of course working together is not only about language and the text, it’s also about how you get along and the (mostly unspoken) way you do business, the sharing and copying of information, transparency and ethics. I was hugely lucky to hook up with one of the most aware, efficient, and professional translators in the business.
Any good partnership depends on generosity, encouragement, respect, and a certain amount of indulgence (not a murmur, so far, at my lapses, my laughable computer “skills” or last-minute panics). And I always look forward to our brainstorming sessions, at the end of the process, when we deal with the knottier problems that have resisted us in the writing: speaking the text aloud, arguing or spurring each other on, edging nearer le mot juste, unafraid to make fools of ourselves.
Perhaps any work or writing should have an element of experiment and risk, as you never know what you might find: someone as passionate for language, as keen to get it right and to learn as you are.
First published in In Other Words: The Journal for Literary Translators, Vol. 27 (Summer 2006) 28–34.
