Forging a Path as a Literary Translator: Insights Gleaned from a Translator of Post-Yugoslav Literatures
Suzana Vuljevic in conversation with Will Firth
My pet peeve is the historical present, which many BCMS writers use extensively but which does not always work well in English.
In March, Will and I exchanged emails and realized we were both in the midst of translating samples for the EU Prize for Literature. Will was working on an excerpt of the nominee for Montenegro, Ilija Đurović’s Sampas (Treći Trg, 2021), a stream-of-consciousness-style novel that follows a couple on their journey through central and southern Montenegro, and I was making my way through the work of Kosovo’s nominee, Ag Apolloni’s Little Red Riding Hood: A Fairy Tale for Adults (Bard Books, 2022), a modern retelling of the classic children’s story that exposes its origins as a cautionary tale about rape. This being one of my first forays into prose translation, the experience—the pacing, the register, the dialogue, the laugh-out-loud humor, even—generated a lot of new questions for me as a translator, about both the craft and the longer-term aspects of pursuing such a career. And who better to ask than Will, who has translated upwards of 50 books, including work from Esperanto and Russian, as well as into German?
Suzana Vuljevic: You have done a lot to put minor languages and literatures on the literary map so to speak, especially with Montenegrin and Macedonian literature. What are some of the difficulties, and conversely, the distinct joys, of working with “minor” literatures and bringing these into the Anglophone world?
Will Firth: I’m passionate about what I do, but I’m aware that my efforts have little lasting impact. Few publishers commission me to do translations. I mostly end up translating writing that I discover and subjectively like, and what I can then arrange some form of funding for. I wish it were simpler, but it’s always been a struggle. Others would be discouraged or frustrated, but it turns out that this is what I do for a living, so I keep going. There are lots of little joys in working with the literatures from “Montedonia” and “Macenegro” (a running gag with my wife), but nothing distinct. I would probably derive similar satisfaction from translating major literatures, like German or Russian. But the Balkans are off the radar of the literary mainstream in the Anglosphere, so the rebellious part of me derives spiteful pleasure from constantly prodding publishers, 99% of whom are gutless and visionless in terms of the Balkans.
At a textual level, one of the main recurring challenges is recreating the texture of tenses so that a narrative will work in English. The verb systems of English and BCMS are very different, and this is compounded by dissimilar narrative traditions and customs. My pet peeve is the historical present, which many BCMS writers use extensively but which does not always work well in English.
SV: How did you come to focus on Montenegrin literature?
WF: As a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon language nerd, my first on-site exposure to real BCMS language and culture was in socialist Croatia in 1987, and ever since my scholarship in Zagreb (1988-89) the Croatian variant of the common language has been my anchor, and Zagreb my “home away from home” in the Balkans.
It would take until 2017 until I first visited Montenegro, but the professional foundations were laid much earlier.
In 2005, I was invited to take part in an intensive seminar for emerging translators from Slovenian and BCMS. It was held at the wonderful Literaturhaus in Munich. Immediately after the seminar, an international symposium was held to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. The Croatian publisher Nenad Popović (Durieux) held a bookstall there. I went up and said hello, and I complained about how difficult it is to find publishers for South Slavic literature in the English-speaking world. He sympathized with me and gave me a copy of Ognjen Spahić’s novel Hansenova djeca, which he had published the year before, and commented: “Ako će išta ići, onda ovo.” (If anything’s going to work, then this.)
That was very kind of him, of course, and it turned out he was right. Over the following years, I translated the remarkable novel “on spec” and then uploaded a sample chapter to my new website. The London-based publisher Istros Books discovered it there by chance in 2011 and asked if it could publish the whole book. That was the beginning of a spell of good cooperation that’s hard to beat: twelve books together in as many years.
But that would not have happened without the Nikolaidis factor. After the seminar in Munich, I became an active member of a collective of German-based South Slavic translators. Most of the other members focused on literature from Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. I found it strange that none of the others had any idea about literature from Montenegro, so I agreed to direct my attention to the southern flank of the BCMS-speaking region. I searched for interesting authors via bookshops and the internet. Never judge a book by its cover, they say. Okay, but I say: Let yourself be inspired by a brilliant cover. When I saw the graphic on the front of Andrej Nikolaidis’s novel Dolazak (2009, Algoritam, Zagreb)—a snow-blasted cross on a mountaintop—I immediately wanted to read the book. As it turned out, the content was as great as the graphic, and I’ve never looked back. I was able to translate the novel with Creative Europe funding, and it was published by Istros Books in 2011 as The Coming.
Now, in May 2023, I’m translating a fourth Nikolaidis novel, Anomalija. I’ve since been to Montenegro several times, know dozens of authors, and have several personal friends in the country. It’s remarkable, in retrospect, how such bonds can develop from coincidental developments and conscious decisions. There have certainly been blips, meltdowns, and a few positive surprises along the way. All in all, I feel it’s quite magical how I’ve come to focus on Montenegrin literature even more than Croatian (as I would have expected). It’s a niche I feel very comfortable in.
SV: What was the literary landscape like when you began your career as a translator? How prominent was Yugoslav literature? What was it like approaching publishers? How has it evolved?
WF: The question is slightly misplaced. I slotted into capital-L literary translation at a rather late stage in life, at the age of forty. I was not an avid consumer of Yugoslav literature before that. And now, apart from limited spells of cooperation with two or three publishers, the reality is that approaching publishers remains difficult. My standing as a translator may have improved somewhat, but I can’t report any positive evolution. The fragmentation of the book market in the BCMS-speaking countries compared with the late-Yugoslav situation 30-35 years ago certainly hasn’t made things easier. But there are paradoxical developments too. In the decade of its existence, Best European Fiction basically published one piece annually from each of the post-Yugoslav countries. Other institutions too, such as the European Union Prize for Literature, ensure that writers from each of the countries regularly get a look-in, though this comes at the price of the writing being compartmentalized nationally.
SV: Lately you published two new collections of women’s short stories, Balkan Bombshells (by Serbian and Montenegrin authors) and Take Six: Six Balkan Women Writers—and Sea, Sun, Salt: Short Stories from Montenegro in 2022. What has the experience of curating these collections been like? How did you approach the task of selecting and curating, assembling, translating, querying and editing these works? How did it compare with translating and publishing a single-author work?
WF: It’s been an honor to be in this editorial role—quite unexpectedly in each case. I never expected to have the freedom to select texts largely according to my own taste. It’s a strange meta-reality: normally I’m a marginalized, seclusive translator, but when a publisher unpredictably feels the urge to publish something I’m suddenly an expert. It feels like a roller coaster. “Curating” sounds far too grand: each collection was produced on a shoestring budget, or with no extra funding at all in the case of Sea, Sun, Salt, so in financial terms it was essentially a glorified form of self-exploitation. (The first two collections received limited funding, from Arts Council England and English PEN respectively.) All three collections involved an inordinate amount of administrative/organizational work, which was largely my responsibility. I hate to think how much I was earning per hour—certainly far less than the minimum wage.
SV: You’ve mentioned in the past (World Literature Today piece on Montenegrin literature) that Montenegrin literature tends to defy categorization or that it is hard to distil common, unifying themes and preoccupations. Do you think that has changed at all? Do you see a progression toward a certain set of questions, concerns or topics? How about in terms of post-Yugoslav literature more broadly? Do you see common features there, in Take Six, for instance?
WF: It’s probably a case of me not seeing the wood for the trees, but Montenegrin literature still defies definition for me. The traits and strengths of the individual authors overarch any real or imagined collective identity. It would be dishonest of me to postulate any common stylistic or thematic basis in any of the collections. I enjoy the chaos and diversity, and I hope this freshness will appeal to readers as well.
SV: What are some of the blind spots of work translated into English from post-Yugoslav languages? What kind of work would you like to see translated in the future?
WF: Blind spots? There are lots of them! Publishers in the Anglosphere are oriented towards what will sell. Classics are right out, unless we’re talking about a golden oldie like Ivo Andrić and a small handful of successful late-20th century writers. It’s great that writers who deal with feminist themes and minority rights are increasingly in the spotlight (Rumena Bužarovska, Petar Andonovksi, Lejla Kalamujić, etc.), but I fear that writers who don’t fit into this progressive new canon will be neglected simply due to limited resources.
SV: What are some of the considerations – practical and economic – that one has to bear in mind when pursuing a career as a literary translator? Could you say a few words about the “hidden,” or less conspicuous, work of the profession?
WF: There are things that I have to do as a literary translator that are preconditions for making it a viable line of work:
– having my own website, i.e. being a distinguishable professional;
– being broadly based in terms of language combinations and fields, but also developing a niche or two (deservedly or not, I’ve maneuvered myself into being one of the main Anglophone translators of contemporary literature from Montenegro);
– I’m organized in a professional association and trade union (to share experience, get advice, and also have a degree of protection when clients default or outright cheat—crass things do happen even in the 21st century);
– I attend book fairs to meet fellow translators, agents, and publishers; I go to the London and Leipzig fairs fairly regularly, and I’ve been to the Frankfurt and Belgrade fairs twice;
– I apply for grants, working scholarships, and residencies.
The last two points have only been an option for me since our son emerged from puberty, but he’s now 32 and I’ve been benefitting from the “newly won” freedom for the last 15 years.
You probably don’t have anything like it in the US, but my health insurance, old-age insurance, and mandatory long-term care insurance here in Germany all run under the umbrella of the Artists’ Social Fund, Künstlersozialkasse. This is a complex, public-funded consortium that pays the “employer” half of my contributions, and I pay the other 50% as if I were an employee. This arrangement is an essential ingredient of me being able to make ends meet as a literary translator. I pay about €200 monthly for the various insurances, which is affordable. Without this scheme, I’d have to pay €400, which simply wouldn’t work. Rents in Berlin are still affordable compared to many other global cities. And, on a personal note, having a partner who earns slightly more also helps.
SV: And on an individual level? What qualities have you observed to be important to your career as a translator?
WF: There are other issues of a semi-professional and semi-personal nature: perseverance, stubbornness, and singlemindedness. My experience is that you need to be willing and able to work 50-60 hours a week. Unpaid sample translations played a big role early in my career, and I financed these partly from savings. I don’t think there are any hard-and-fast rules. Literary translators are a very heterogeneous bunch. I’m a slow and ill-disciplined reader; I prefer to browse and sample. I’m open to many different types of writing and am slow to pass judgement on what’s quality and what’s junk. It often depends on the attitude of the publisher (marketing, etc.) and the effort an editor may be prepared to invest to help bring out the gems slumbering in a text.
Time-management and one’s own approach to texts is also a significant issue. I feel a need for what I’d call “well-dosed perfectionism”: I use the time I have for a job effectively, keep searching for the right solution, but learn to find the right time to say, “That’ll have to do,” and deliver the translation to the client.
Will Firth was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb, and Moscow. He lives in Berlin, where he works as a translator of literature and the humanities (from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croatian, aka “BCMS”). His best-received translations of recent years have been Aleksandar Gatalica’s Great War, Faruk Šehić’s Quiet Flows the Una, and Tatjana Gromača’s Divine Child. www.willfirth.de.
Suzana Vuljevic is a historian, writer and translator (Albanian and Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian to English) with a Ph.D. in History and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Her essays and translations have appeared in Artforum, Asymptote, AGNI, Exchanges, Harvard Magazine, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere. She was named a 2022 ALTA Virtual Travel Fellow and currently serves as a research editor at EuropeNow.
Originally published on Hopscotch Translation
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
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