Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Translation Blog
BookTrust: Translated Fiction is offering a new blog in which Daniel Hahn, translator of three novels by the Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa (one won the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), will blog the process of his translation of a fourth Agualusa novel beginning September 29, taking “us, week by week, through his translation process.” He promises something different from “a day in the life of”; he promises the whole translation process. He will be “working through a novel from my own first launching into a first draft, right up to publication. It’s not a blog about the life of a translator – musings about translation generally, reports of events I’ve attended or readings I’ve given, people I’ve met at launch parties, books I’ve read – but intimately about a single piece of translation work, which I hope will bring you closer to the experience, to the pleasures it brings and the questions it raises.”
The first entry, September 29, was “What this blog is for”; the second, October 7, was “Anticipating general problems”; the third, October 10, wondered “To footnote or not to footnote.”
Perhaps the comments in the SWET Weblog and discussion in the Forums (General Discussion, Thread: Translation Process in Real Life) will reflect facets of daily J-E translation work and share translation details as we read about Hahn’s approaches and techniques and questions.