What makes a translation great? Ten literary translators from across the world weigh in
To the outside world, literary translators are famously invisible. Being a tight-knit community of solitary home workers, though, we talk a lot amongst ourselves. Recently, one big thing we’ve been talking about is reviews of our work. As critics come to notice our existence, we garner both praise and – in what feels like greater depth – criticism. So I thought it might be useful to ask other literary translators what they aim for, what positive criteria we have for judging the outcome of our work. I was not disappointed.
It’s easy to say what a bad translation is. The ones that are accidentally jagged like the person wielding the scissors was drunk. The ones where someone has misunderstood the original, or perhaps misinterpreted it. The ones where all individuality has been smoothed out. But how do we identify a successful translation? When have we done our job well? What is it we want to achieve, beyond mere fluidity?
Fluidity is not to be sneezed at, and is often difficult to accomplish, but a good translation goes further and achieves the self-evidence and urgency of the original. It sings, whispers and swears like the original and leaves the reader thrilled, disturbed and amused in the same ways too. A sensitive monolingual reviewer describes the style of a good translation in terms that unknowingly echo the reviews of the original novel or poetry. A good translation does not have to be impeccably starched and ironed, but dares to be ragged and frantic when appropriate. When presented with a few lines of original and translation, a bilingual reader might not be sure which is which. The voice of a good translation is as distinctive in English as the author’s voice in the original language, also when compared to other authors translated by the same translator. A good translation accepts the gifts English offers and is not an endless procession of compromise and loss. A good translation is something to aspire to and, in this perfectionist’s profession, a good translation is never good enough.
