Oh my but you ain’t gonna like this! Still, try and read it. I sincerely hope you might find something useful, especially if you are a technical translator wishing to become a literary one. Please bear in mind this only applies to real fiction and the very best publicism, not to scribble misnamed literature.
First of all, try not to translate books you do not like. One can do a good job of about anything, if one tries hard, but a perfect translation is something else again. It’s not just craft, it’s art, and that requires heart… among other things.
Second of all — no CATs, no TMs, no computers, even, until the proper time. What you need is a copy of the book to be translated, good paper, a good fountain pen (or a very good ballpoint, but you’d better leave that — red — for the editing) and a very good paper dictionary or two. An encyclopedia sometimes comes in handy, too. Yes, and silence, if you can afford it. Your computer, your TV set, your player and such are all off! Don’t be afraid, it’s not as scary as it might seem; it’s fun, in fact.
Write longhand. Don’t be stingy and don’t spare the paper, leave double spaces between the lines — you will need those later, I can assure you! Do not hurry, but try not to dawdle, either. If you are not happy about some word or phrase or sentence, but somehow are not able to find a better one, just underline that and go on; it beats getting stuck, and you most probably will find a much better word/phrase/sentence later. If there’s verse in the text, leave space enough for that and go on. Translating verse is not easy at all and it takes at least ten times more time than translating prose. Instead of doing that themselves, some translators prefer leaving the job to poets, but if you are a really good translator you can do it yourself and even make a better translation than any poet would, because poets tend to make their own poetry rather than loyally follow the source, so that pieces translated by them sometimes have little or even nothing to do with the rest of the book. You must translate verse before or after translating the bulk and put all of the verses into the proper places after the translation is finished, but before it is edited.
Edit the finished translation still on paper. Use red ink — unless, of course, you prefer doing your translation in red; in that case, it’s black ink for editing. By the way, the colour of ink — and the quality of paper — you use is also of some (though secondary) importance: if you choose the colour you like, the job goes a tad more smooth. You might even find you prefer different colours for different kinds of books. Ideally, you should be allowed some period of time to “forget” your translation before editing it, but that seems to be luxury unattainable, nowadays… No leaving unedited pieces and going on; edit everything without jumping to and fro.
Have finished editing? Now turn your computer on and use it as a “smart typewriter”. While typing, you are bound to find some trifles to be improved. Do it. Now, you can ask questions online, if there are still words/phrases you have some doubts about. Yet it’s better if you don’t, because even a right answer might be not the right answer in that it might be “out of tune” and not “your” (the author’s) style. Do the spell checking, but do not overly trust the spell checker. What’s correct in general is not necessarily right in fiction.
A good news is this does not gobble up as much time as you might think. Computer and the Web distract, so you work considerably slower. In fact, you might even finish your translation quicker, this way, especially if you switch your mobile off before starting to translate. If you must, check your email and anything you think you need to check first, and when you are satisfied nothing global has happened you can start working. Nothing global is very likely to happen while you are at it.
Matter is, good fiction is books meant just for you — the Reader. It’s just you and the book, or even you “inside” the book, and that happens only with paper books. So literary translators must work undistracted; it is not always easy to get “inside” even without the Web demanding Its share of attention. Writers are quite another kettle of fish: they may write the way they like and use what they fancy — computers, typewriters, sheets of paper, scraps of paper, whatever. That’s so because they have already been alone with their books elsewhere. Translators cannot. Of course, a very good translator can use a computer and make a not bad translation, but a true reader will tell the difference. Your being able to tell the difference means you can become a true literary translator. One more thing: you must be a reader and like reading books. If you have not read lots and lots of books, you simply will not be able to notice and recognize literary allusions, and those are numerous in some books.
Yeah, and literary translators earn less than “technicians”, as a general rule…
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