Ensuring Nothing Gets Lost in Translation

"With a translation, you're all alone with your own language. That's the biggest problem that you have," says Karin Betz, who translates Chinese into German.

That is usually the case but today Betz has an audience. She has just spent two hours demonstrating live to visitors to the Frankfurt Book Fair how she goes about doing her work.

She sat at her laptop and typed as normal while her working process was projected onto two large screens. One screen displayed passages of the Chinese core text, "Naxiren de zuihou xunqing«" by Gu Xue’er, whist the other showed Betz's instant translation. The audience watched enthralled as the German text changed by the second.

Some Chinese speakers discussed the interpretation of certain words with the translator.

Translating is personal

Betz, who has translated the works of the famous and often banned Mo Yan, the London-based dissident poet Yang Lian and the journalist Liao Yiwu (not in Frankfurt because he was denied an exit visa by the Chinese authorities), explains that "a translation is personal" and a core text is open to interpretation.

Describing the challenges of working with Chinese core texts, the sinologist-turned-translator explains that "Chinese is a highly contextual language -- you do not get that much information from the words themselves. You have to have a lot of cultural experience, as well as know a lot of words."

Thus, translators are not only mediators between a text and a reader but also between two, or more, cultures.

That's where the art of translation lies, says Ulrich Blumenbach, the acclaimed translator of the late American writer David Foster Wallace, who "wants to get the text as close to the German culture as possible without violating the original."

Making the reading process smoother

Karin Betz, however, does not mind violating the original text a little if this will make the reading process smoother.

Chinese literature has gained an undeserved "bad reputation" because of certain peculiarities, she explains. "For example, the language is quite repetitive and Chinese writers like to use the same image over and over again in the same story."

She sees her task, therefore, as having to render a text readable to a German public and says that sometimes "it is really important to alter the original text."

A good translator will alter a text without being noticed. Indeed, this is the nature of the profession smiles Blumenbach: "If we do a good job, then we are invisible because the reader does not notice that there is something between him and the author. Actually we should be happy with our invisibility."

But of course some translators are not completely "happy with their invisibility" and they admit it is somewhat jarring that readers often do not know who translated the books they devour.

Trusting the translator

That is why both Betz and Blumenbach appreciate the fact that gradually translators are receiving more acknowledgement for their work from critics and public alike.

Writers themselves have long appreciated them. "They are thankful for the work we do and they have to have a lot of trust in us because they usually do not speak German," explains Betz.

Moreover, Blumenbach explains that writers will generally cooperate when it comes to explaining certain passages or words that are ambiguous.

After all, it is in everybody's interest that the final text is a smooth read and that nothing has been lost in translation.

Author: Anne Thomas
Editor: Thomas Baerthlein