Jamie Bulloch talks to TripFiction about the art of translation

12th October 2018

We recently met up with Jamie Bulloch, and we wanted to hear more from him about the art of translation…

Jamie has worked as a professional translator from German since 2001. His translations include books by Paulus Hochgatterer, Alissa Walser, Timur Vermes, Friedrich Christian Delius and Linda Stift. Jamie won the 2014 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Best German Translation for Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast. A particular recent favourite of ours is the cult novel of Berlin: One Clear Ice-Cold Morning at the Beginning of the 21st Century by Roland Schimmelpfennig.

Over to Jamie for more insight:

Many translators are also actively involved as scouts for various English-language publishers. Part of our work is to report on foreign books that have aroused particular interest and even to suggest titles which we may have come across ourselves. Likewise we frequently prepare samples for foreign publishing houses to assist them in their tough job of selling to the English-language market. Especially in the run-up to important book fairs, such as Frankfurt or London, these short commissions can come thick and fast, and act as a useful filler when in-between bigger jobs.

TF’s Tina and Jamie

When I am contracted to translate a book, the first thing I do is to read the text. No surprise there, perhaps, but I try my best to read it as I would any other novel, without concerning myself unduly about the translation for the time being. I want to enjoy the book and get an overall feel before embarking on the close textual work, which may only happen several months afterwards.

Over the course of my career I have translated a wide variety of texts, all with their different styles and challenges, but my general approach remains the same for each book. I tend to translate fairly quickly, as this is how I find myself best able to inject fluency into my writing. When I spend too long grappling with some tricky syntax I know that the end result is going to need reworking and polishing to achieve the elegance necessary. In a sense, then, this first stage of the translation process is fairly straightforward – I work systematically from beginning to end, producing a draft as quickly as I can.

In many ways the second stage is more interesting. Not only is this where corrections are made and flaws ironed out, but it’s where I attempt to bring the text to life. To suggest an analogy, stage one is like assembling Frankenstein’s monster; stage two is where I animate it. For this I attempt to put the German to one side as far as possible. Only where it doesn’t make sense in my draft or there’s a particularly ugly sentence do I return to the original, often to find that I’ve made a mistake or caught the wrong emphasis. Otherwise, this stage is all about making the language flow and read like proper English.

By its very nature, translation is solitary work, but it’s also very much a collaborative process. Stage three is where I contact the author, assuming they’re alive, to clear up any remaining issues I haven’t been able to resolve myself, but also to highlight possible inconsistencies or even errors in the original. Nobody reads a book as carefully as a translator and it’s astonishing how often you detect things that have passed unnoticed through a rigorous editorial process and several editions. Noticing that a character gets out of bed twice on consecutive pages, the passenger suddenly becomes the driver of a car, or that the Swiss hero of a novel could not possibly understand the Norwegian spoken to him at breakfast are just three of many logical mistakes I’ve found over the years. In return, the author may make minor suggestions themselves, contributing to the general improvement of the book.

With all these changes incorporated the text then goes to the English-language editor for another stage of collaborative work. I know of some translators who are very touchy about their writing and loathe editorial meddling. I am not one of these. Don’t forget, your editor is on your side, your editor is your best friend (sometimes literally so in my case, when it’s my wife doing the job). I would far rather have an interventionist for an editor and get my draft back with plenty of underlining than page after page of clean text, which always makes me suspicious. Yes, on occasion I will dispute an editor’s amendment, but I would say that ninety per cent of the time I enthusiastically endorse the change or suggestion, which ultimately improves the text. In your own work it’s all too easy to overlook inelegant phrasing or even miss mistakes, and it’s impossible to be completely objective. In the best-case scenario the translator and editor engage in a constructive dialogue which can inspire you to come up with alternative, creative solutions you hadn’t considered originally.

The final stage of the process involves the proof-reader, who will check the text for typos, formatting errors and the like, but also for other mistakes or inconsistencies that all those pairs of eyes which have gone before may have missed. This is also the last chance for the translator to input any changes, though for reasons of time and money publishers are understandably reluctant to have the text reworked at this stage.

Then it’s just a case of waiting until, like a proud parent, you hold the finished book in your hands… and wait nervously to hear the reactions of others.

Thank you so much to Jamie, such an interesting and important process!!

Catch Jamie on Twitter

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