SIX QUESTIONS TO EXPECT ON A LITERARY TRANSLATION DEBUT

??????????????My (full length novel) literary translation debut has been littered with questions. From beginning to end. And even after. The questions at the beginning were self-inflicted, doubt ridden: am I up to the task or am I swimming out of my depth? The fact that “Days Come and Go” has been released ?means I answered those questions. However, the questions that came after were fielded by the public during book tour events. Here are some of those that have stuck with me by virtue of their recurrence or relevance. They could help other (budding) literary translators know what to expect.

?How did you go about translating this novel?

This was the most recurrent question I was asked. Sometimes, it was framed as “What was your approach?” or “What did you research or read before setting out to translate?” But ultimately the bottom line was the same: they askers wanted to know my modus operandi. And my answer often came off as a surprise to some. MY ANSWER: I didn’t carry out any research before proceeding to translate. I didn’t even read the novel before I started to translate. I did google and then tried to read some reviews of the novel but that was all.?My reason for this: I was apprehensive that pre-translation reading of the novel would somehow undermine the instinctiveness I wanted- and thought I needed- to produce something decent. I wanted my draft translation to be the outcome of a virgin encounter between my instinct and the author’s genius, not the outcome of a mental pre-translation, review and then retranslation. I wanted my draft translation to be raw. In retrospect, I think my approach was an attempt to spare myself the burden of carrying this task around and having it leak into my other activities. I wanted to translate only when I sat in front of my computer and assigned myself only this task. Nothing else.

How do you as a man go about translating a feminist?

Now this one caught me off guard. I must admit that I was asked this question during a side, not a book tour, event. Some of the Google-generated reviews I had read did in fact allude to Hemley Boum as a feminist. Unfortunately, I failed to see directly how a question could be brewed out of this fact and thrown into my lap. Sure, gender considerations had popped up as I translated, making wonder whether as a man I had the credibility to translate a woman. Following the controversy around the legitimacy of a white lady (Marieke Lucas Rijneveld) to translate the poems of?a black woman (Amanda Gorman) into Dutch, I caught myself on several occasions asking whether a man – moi - was the right person to translate Hemley Boum – a woman. This intellectual turmoil was quite acute around the translation of distinctively -feminine experiences such as menstruation where I wondered whether a woman who experiences this phenomenon would detect and convey some subtlety lost on me as a man? MY ANSWER: Feminism is not a woman -only affair. Even men can be feminists. Even men can advocate and fight for equality for both genders. As a man who counts?several strong women among his role models, translating a feminist was some sort of conceptual contribution to the fight for equality, a tribute to strong women, the advancement of woman in a society that quite often footnotes them in accounts of human kind and memorable literary figures. So, I ultimately treated this impostor syndrome with the realisation that my legitimacy to translate a feminist lay more in the alignment of my values and the author’s than in the coincidence of our genders. On a very, very, very light-hearted note, a female novelist’s credibility has never been questioned because she has male characters in her book. Ou bien?

What quantity of loss can you admit to:90 or 99 %?

I remember the moderator’s face as he asked this question. A mischievous smile played on his face as he dished the question in chunks, some words stretched into an unconventional number of syllables like some UFC ring announcer trying to electrify a pre-match fight atmosphere with suspense. Somehow, I expected this question because equivalence is a mainstay of debates in literary translation. The tricky thing about this question is the fact that it somehow asks a translator to rate their work; be judge and jury in a sense. MY ANSWER: [quoting Professor Wanchia?Titus Neba, one of my lecturers in translation school] The task of a translator can be compared to the task of someone tasked with transporting meat from the slaughterhouse to the market stall. Despite his/her best efforts, there is a likelihood that some drops of blood, which constitute the weight of the meat, will fall off along the way. On arrival however, he/she cannot be accused of having stolen ?part of the meat simply because these drops of blood fell off. As such, loss is integral to the translation process but if the loss is not perceptible to the naked eye and doesn’t distort the core of the parcel being transported then there is practically speaking no loss.

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Why would you drop the juicy contracts of commercial translation and instant financial reward for literary translation and its deferred financial rewards.

?This is another question I had not seen coming. I had prepped for an avalanche of intellectual questions about translation strategies. But at no point had I prepared to be asked questions about money. Lol. Luckily, this didn’t require intense mental exertion. MY ANSWER: I have been translating commercially for around ten years and asking myself what next? What is the next frontier? Where can I break new ground to escape the monotony of translating legal and other related texts? Literary translation was the natural answer?especially as I had just completed two literary translation workshops and co-authored one short story translation. As juicy as commercial translation is, there comes a time when it is boring and no longer gets my juices flowing. As a progressive learner, only literary translation presented me with the thrill and challenge of novelty that I craved and so I happily shelved instant gratification for deferred rewards.[Lol.

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How did you go from co- translating a short story to translating a full-length novel?

This is a good question. A really good one because it speaks to something I wrestled with right from day one when I was offered this project: legitimacy. I was intimidated by the breadth and depth of this task. And beneath the veneer of assurance I flashed the editor as we discussed feasibility, doubt lurk. And threatened to flourish.?I wondered: was I jumping straight from amateur boxing to a heavyweight title bout? Was I taking my driving test on a busy highway whereas I had been trained in the comfort of quiet village routes. Questions ran riot in my mind??I found translating a full-length novel, from an internationally-acclaimed winner, distinctly daunting. Overwhelmingly demanding. In as much as it was passionately exciting. So going from co-translating a short story to single-handedly translating a full-length novel was no easy task. Not one bit. MY ANSWER: I must admit it was not easy. It was a quantum leap. A little bit like bending over backwards. Or trying to do splits with no previous history of athleticism. The core challenge lay in maintaining the same amount of concentration and focus across the over the ninety-thousand words the novel contained. To meet this challenge, I broke the task into small chunks, each of which I treated as a separate whole. Luckily, the novel is segmented into character-driven chunks that brilliantly fit into each other. Furthermore, I printed my translations and, using a pen, proofread one page at a time. Though tedious, this approach enabled me engage me with the translation afresh and spot things that may have escaped my vigilance on a computer screen. Importantly too, I fully leveraged the knowledge gathered from all the literary workshops I had attended, drawing from the tips and genius of all those accomplished and budding literary translators I met in person and online. Shout out of course to my copy editors, who nudged ( and pushed me) ever closer to excellence. Without them, I am not sure I would have realised this leap.

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??????????????????????????So there you have it: some of the questions you could face on your literary translation debut. There is nevertheless one question that has to do with the translation of the title. I can’t quite remember it word for word. However, I am confident it was about whether I had considered other translations for the title. This was my answer, roughly: the public has to understand two things. Firstly, a translation is also a product that has to be sold. Secondly, several voices (target audience, editor and translator) dictate the final outcome. Combined consideration of these two may often lead to choices that challenge logic. In others, an editor or a target audience may warrant a title choice that readers will find “confusing.” What other question would have loved to ask during one of the book events?

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“Days Come and Go,” my English translation of “Les jours viennent et passent” by France-based Cameroon writer Hemley Boum, is available for order at https://bit.ly/3GU3770 for US readers and at https://bit.ly/3GU3770 for readers in Cameroon and around Africa.