I mentioned a while ago in passing that I was working on a literary translation, so I wanted to share a little with my readers about this project of mine. I'd worked as a translator for years before I discovered that one could be a scholar of literature and make a living at it. Still, translation retained its magic for me. I used to translate non-literary text, so this is my very first attempt at literary translation. The book was published by Igrulita Press, a publishing house that is dedicated to promoting Russian-language writers all over the world.
The novel I'm translating is part of the book titled Stories of Similar Epochs
by Michael Blekhman. (The book is only sold in Russian at this point, so please don't go off buying it unless you are a Russian-speaker.)
This writer is heavily postmodern, which makes his writing incredibly hard to translate. Everything is a literary allusion, a play on words, a historical reference. This can never be a word-for-word translation because that would make the novel completely useless. There are books that you read for the plot and don't care much how they are written. John Grisham is a perfect example of this kind of writing. Reflection, which is the novel I'm translating, is the exact opposite of this kind of writing. It's driven by the beauty of the language, not by the desire to create a fast-paced plot with a lot of twists and turns.
When my translation finally appears in print, it will be almost as much my work of literature as it is the author's.
The novel I'm translating is part of the book titled Stories of Similar Epochs
by Michael Blekhman. (The book is only sold in Russian at this point, so please don't go off buying it unless you are a Russian-speaker.)This writer is heavily postmodern, which makes his writing incredibly hard to translate. Everything is a literary allusion, a play on words, a historical reference. This can never be a word-for-word translation because that would make the novel completely useless. There are books that you read for the plot and don't care much how they are written. John Grisham is a perfect example of this kind of writing. Reflection, which is the novel I'm translating, is the exact opposite of this kind of writing. It's driven by the beauty of the language, not by the desire to create a fast-paced plot with a lot of twists and turns.
When my translation finally appears in print, it will be almost as much my work of literature as it is the author's.
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