Negotiating contracts can be full of pitfalls and challenges, but good contracts are a translator’s lifeline. In this essay, Finnish-English translator Owen Witesman delves into best practices, strategies, and current trends in contracts for literary translation.
‘Translation, Pleasure, and Responsibility’ explores the controversial and ethically complex question of the ‘domestication’ of literary texts in translation. It examines this issue as it concerns texts set in the target culture, using the example of the forthcoming novel Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristina Carlson – set in England and recently translated into English by Emily and Fleur Jeremiah – to make a case for readerly pleasure as a desirable aim of translation.
Interest in Finnish literature has been slowly but steadily increasing in the English-speaking world.
When I first came upon Asko Sahlberg’s novel The Brothers (He, 2009), I was impressed by its taut, poetic style, its savage, …
Tove Jansson’s Moomin books are widely cherished by children and adults alike. They are funny and charming yet haunting and profound. Lovable Moomintroll; practical and sensible Moominmama; spiky Little My; the terrifying yet complex monster, Groke – Jansson’s creations linger in the mind.
The poems of Eeva-Liisa Manner (1921–95) are lucid yet mysterious. They are haunted by echoes, steps, shadows, reflections; but they evoke ghostliness with utter clarity.
I am a professional translator, and I have a secret: I don’t read translations much. Shocked? Don’t be.
You have options, and your selection of translator matters.