Interview with Thomas Christensen, literary translator
In these posts, I will be interviewing the world's best translators/interpreters. For what better way, for someone new in the translation world , like myself, to learn from the best? Thank you so much to those who have devoted their time to to inform and entertain us with their own stories and experiences.
This is a special post, as it is the first English-speaking translator I've
had the honour to interview. We are interviewing Thomas W. Christensen, who is
an American author, translator, and publisher. He is known for his publications
on literature, history, and art; his literary translations from French and
Spanish; and his work as an editor. Thomas obtained an advanced degree in
comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Of the many
novels he has translated, the most well-known is the best-seller LikeWater for Chocolate (by Laura Esquivel), in which he worked with his
wife, Carol Christensen, who is also a translator. He has written introductions
to some books, such as Sylvie and Bruno, by Lewis Carroll and has
also received an award for dedication to translation from the "American
Literary Translators Association".
1. Can you tell us about your first job as a
translator? How did you decide to start working as a translator? Which was your
first published translation?

2. What do you think are the most common mistakes
amongst new translators? What advice would you give us?
The most common mistake is stopping before being done.
Sometimes the magic of seeing the text appear in English bewitches us, and we
are entranced into thinking we have created an English equivalent. But usually
artifacts of the source language remain, things that are not odd in the
original but in congregate are slightly off in the target language. So you have
English, sort of, but a document that is not really a cultural equivalent. At
some point you have to cast the original aside and just work in the
target-language text, to make sure it is convincing and coherent as a work in
its own right. Reading aloud can be a help. Of course, there are other kinds of
translation, such as scholarly translations of ancient works, containing
abundant notes and explications, that are really cribs to the original. But I
am talking about literary translation, where the goal is a literary work in the
target language.
3. Do you usually use CAT (Computer Aided Translation)
tools when you translate? If so, which one/s?
I have used these, though I'm not sure how much help
they were. I used to have a Word add-on that I used for a while, but I don't remember
what it was called. More recently I have sometimes used Google Translate when
puzzling over some passage. Occasionally it can be helpful.
4. Can you describe your translation process? Do you
read the whole book or do you translate as you read? And when you work with
Carol, your wife, how do you divide the tasks?
Because I do literary translation it is important for
me to read and understand the whole work before translating. Literary
translation is in a way a kind of critical reading, a sort of literary
criticism, and rereading is a key in criticism. Critical reading in the source
language and writing ability in the target language are essential skills in
literary translation. When I would work with Carol one of us would take the
lead and then the other would review and edit. (The lead translator's name
would appear first.) We would then discuss options. Carol usually reads my work
and offers suggestions even when we are not officially co-translators.
5. What helpful and not-so-helpful work habits have
you developed over the years?
Until recently I always had a day job, so I had to be
efficient at working in evenings and weekends. As a professional, I had to meet
deadlines, so I usually set progress landmarks that I would try to meet. It's
important to get a rough version done quickly in order to allow sufficient time
for the important work of refining the text.
6. Which types of differences between English and
Spanish have given you more problems?
Sometimes Spanish is ambiguous where ambiguity is
difficult in English, such as with verbs that have implied subjects with
unspecified genders. Carlos Fuentes told me that he found the opening of
"Cambio de Piel" ambiguous in a way that the English translation,
A Change of Skin -- regrettably, he thought -- is not. Spanish is
also more liberal about sentence structure than English, so typically a lot of
sentences need to be recast. There are cultural, conceptual, and connotative
issues as well. Alastair Reid, the New Yorker writer and prolific translator,
told me that he didn't think the title Like Water for Chocolate would work in English, because readers would not understand the reference. He
said he had spent a long time trying to thinking of an alternative without
coming up with anything he liked. The publisher for a while wanted to call that
book Boiling Point. But we wanted to retain the original flavor and
ultimately prevailed (partly because Boiling Point, fortunately,
had already been used). Yesterday I was reading a novel that included a translation
of the Los Lobos song La Pistola y El Corazón. It ended "But
my tears are now drying / With my pistol and my heart /And here as always I
spend my life / With the pistol and the heart." I don't think this is a
very good translation, because "con la pistola y el corazón" is not
terribly odd in Spanish, but "with the pistol and the heart" is a
phrase no English-speaker would ever naturally utter. I'm not sure what a
better translation would be, but if I were translating this I would have to
give it a lot of thought.
7. When you were translating the best-seller
Like Water for Chocolate, what problems did you encounter? Given
that the main theme is Gastronomy, which has a highly cultural component, were
there more challenges than with any other novel?
The biggest problem was simply a very tight deadline.
I have often wished that we had had more time for this project. The
gastronomical aspect was not that challenging since shortly before then we had
translated a big book for Weldon Owen called Mexico the Beautiful
Cookbook, so we had encountered a lot of the terminology there. The
biggest challenge was that the publisher initially wanted us to find English
alternatives for all the Mexican cooking words, like comal, metate, and so on. We thought these words were necessary
ingredients for flavoring the work, and fortunately the publisher relented.
8. Did you see the movie? What did you think about it?
We saw it at the Mill Valley Film Festival. The ticket
taker said "You're the first ones who got the title right." I liked
it.
9. Could you tell us a funny anecdote?
I can tell you a couple related to working with Carlos
Fuentes. First, he told me that when he traveled to Russia he was presented
with what was said to be a translation of Cambio de Piel, which is
a big book. But the translated work was very thin. How could this be, he asked.
"Oh," his hosts told him, "we took out all the parts we thought
Russian readers wouldn't like." Second, as you might know, Carlos
characterized writers as either "putter-inners" or
"taker-outers." He was in the first camp, constantly adding material
to his books and rarely removing any. In the book I translated I noticed he had
said the same thing three or four times. I mentioned this to him, expecting him
to delete one of the repetitions. Instead, he added "As I said
before...."
Thank you so much for this interview, Thomas, it was a real pleasure.
Here you can read the translated version of this interview. I hope you've enjoyed it.
Here you can read the translated version of this interview. I hope you've enjoyed it.
Keep calm and translate!
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