Anyone who speaks a second, or third, language will probably at some point have to explain the contents of one their languages to speakers of their other language. When my mum visited me in Japan many years ago, I did my best to explain what I could of some of the conversations around her, for example. I was, and am, limited in how much use I was, but I could always get the main points across. I think.
So, I have nothing but a kind of mystical admiration for those who do such things on a professional level. Not just because they know two or more languages really well, but that they can convey the subtleties, nuances and often highly idiomatic and culturally specific information from one person’s utterances to people who have no knowledge of that ‘foreign’ language. To do it to the very highest level and get somewhere close to what the original writer or speaker intended takes an incredible understanding of both languages and the cultural contexts in which they exist. And then, the translator or interpreter also has to be an incredibly brilliant communicator in their own right. That is, if translating, they need to be great writers in order to translate great, or even not so great, writers.
It sounds all rather gushing, doesn’t it? Yes, I admit, I am a bit of a fanboy of the really talented translator or interpreter. Which brings me to a book I just finished that made me even more of a fan, while simultaneously eliminating some of that mystique I was talking about.
Daniel Hahn translates from Portuguese, Spanish and French (phew!). Among his more easily name-dropped translations are those of writers José Eduardo Agualusa, José Saramago, and the autobiography of football superstar Pelé. But he has translated and written sooo much more. In Catching Fire: A Translation Diary (2022), Hahn lays bare the ‘job’ of translating a complex novel from Chilean Spanish to (mostly) British English in the most honest (well, I assumed it was honest) and engaging manner, taking us stage by stage through his three and a half months of translation work on the novel Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit.
“Good writing isn’t about easily interchangeable set phrases,” Hahn writes in the Introduction. “That’s not the bit that sets the translator, or the reader, alight. Good writing, the writing that’s a joy to read and translate, is new and unlikely, replacing cliché and formula with something altogether fresh, brightly lit and alive.”
The diary, which is full of such passionate insights, was originally an online, real-time, account of his work process and even includes some of the responses from readers who were following his regular updates at the time. As he translated he posted questions, admitted doubts and showed examples of the drafts he made, from the ‘rough’ first stages to the polished novel. On the surface, this could sound like a really dull, self-indulgent exercise in navel-gazing of interest to no-one but the would-be translator, and the writer himself, of course. But Hahn’s casual and honest admissions are a refreshing peek into the work of a thoughtful language professional and, like the reading of a novel itself, I wanted to see what happened next at every stage in his translation story.
"Good writing, the writing that’s a joy to read and translate, is new and unlikely, replacing cliché and formula with something altogether fresh, brightly lit and alive." – Daniel Hahn
But Hahn’s observations are not just specific to translators or translating. Many of the points he makes about his role can be appreciated by anyone learning or working in a second language: ‘… even down on a word-by-word level, there’s no single word in one language that maps perfectly onto a word in another – not one. And every language has things it can do, and things it can’t,’ he points out. And what language learner would not agree wholeheartedly with that?
Practising translators are more likely to find nothing particularly new in this book, but they may find reassuring common ground and shared anxieties – with the occasional ‘Oh, I feel that too’ or ‘You too!’ reaction upon a particular observation or difficulty that Hahn writes about. In fact, Hahn admits in the Afterword his own pleasant surprise on connecting with so many fellow translators through the original online version of the diary and the ‘solidarity’ it seemed to elicit.
Overall, this was an easy read about a difficult process and one that, perhaps, is not appreciated by a wide enough audience for all the deep skill and careful consideration it requires. However, I will end on a question for which I have no personal answer: as AI technology gets better at translations, along with other things that humans do*, will skilled translators become sidelined for the sake of cost saving and ‘efficiency’? I hope not, and, although it may not have been his intention, Hahn makes a great case for the eternal importance of that human understanding in the translation of literature, at the very least.
Daniel Hahn, Catching Fire: A Translation Diary (2022), published by Charco Press
*Interestingly, perhaps, this week I was also reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952) which deals with this very topic of human obsoletion as we turn more and more to machines and technology to do our work. I may or may not write a blog about this, or perhaps Vonnegut (a writer I like), in the future.
